The Pulse Nightclub Massacre memorial mural on the walls of local LGBT community gathering place in Orlando, FL The Centerhas been vandalized and its likely to be the work of the white supremacists group The Patriot Front.
Stickers and leaflets were placed on the mural, covering the Pulse logo.
The Patriot Front is identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a “white nationalist hate group.” According to the SPLC, the group was formed in the aftermath of the deadly “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, and like their not-so-distant cousins the neo-Nazis, they also call for the formation of a white ethnostate.
Orlando Weekly also reported that The Center’s phone lines had been cut. The LGBT aid organization was unable to field calls from those in need during the pandemic.
On June 12, 2016 Omar Mateen opened fire at Pulse Nightclub leaving 49 dead and 53 injured. He later pledged allegiance to ISIS, saying that the shooting was motivated by Islamic extremism.
Donald Trump used the PULSE nightclub terrorist attack where forty-nine people were killed and 58 were injured, most of them from the LGBT community on Wednesday to push the NRA’s pro-gun agenda sating that it “wouldn’t have happened” if anyone in the nightclub had been armed at the time of the attack.
Trump cited the Orlando attack while making an argument against “gun-free zones,” which in his warped little mind thinks would make citizens attractive targets for gunmen intent on carrying out mass shootings
“As an example, you take Pulse nightclub — if you had one person in that room that could carry a gun and knew how to use it, it wouldn’t have happened, or certainly not to the extent it did, where he was just in there shooting, and shooting and shooting and they were just defenseless” – Donald Trump
In reality Orlando police Officer Adam Gruler was armed and working as off-duty security at the club. According to police, he exchanged gunfire with gunman Omar Mateen outside the club.
Trump also pushed the pro-gun NRA agenda Trump made similar claims on CNN just days after the June 12, 2016, massacre.
“If some of those great people that were in the club that night had guns strapped to their waist or strapped to their ankle, and if the bullets were going in the other direction, aimed at this guy who was just open target practice, you would’ve had a situation folks, which would have been always horrible, but nothing like the carnage that we all as a people suffered this weekend.”
It’s estimated the NRA contributed $21 million to Trump’s presidential campaign.
In April 2017, he told the organization, “You have a true friend and champion in the White House.”
A Far South Side grade school will not co-host a haunted house that contained, among other depictions, a representation of the June 2016 shootings at the Pulse nightclub, according to CPS officials. Fernwood Elementary School, 10041 S. Union Ave., was advertised by promoters as the location of a haunted house entitled The Room: A Journey to Hell that was scheduled to take place the evenings of Oct. 29 and Oct. 30. Fernwood was also initially listed as a co-sponsor of the event.
Advertised as a “Christian interactive experience,” the event is produced by Tyrone Tappler Productions. On Aug. 31, the company asked on Facebook for volunteers who’d depict the victims of the Pulse nightclub shooting: “Club Pulse, Dancers, Victims … CAGED PEOPLE/SCREAMERS, Extras needed trying to escape a cage! … SOUNDS INTERESTING? COME OUT THIS SATURDAY!!!”
Among other scenarios reportedly depicted in the haunted house were a botched abortion and the 2015 Charleston church shooting. According to the ticket sales page, The Room “is a real life haunted house. Guests will experience IN YOUR FACE scenes of dark reality. … You will walk in 10 Rooms and encounter individuals who will make choices. The choice is life or death; sin or salvation; heaven or hell. The scenes will be action-packed, real and jaw dropping.”
The “event” which is obviously a take on traditional Christian “hell houses” which are haunted attractions typically run by evangelical Christian churches or parachurch organizations. They depict real-life situations of what they consider sin and the torments of the damned in Hell, and usually conclude with a depiction of Heaven.
After discovering what they were planning to do, a spokesperson for the Chicago Public Schools said that the event would no longer take place at the elementary school that was rented out for the occasion:
CPS spokesman Michael Passman told Windy City Times in an Oct. 28 email that the event will not take place at Fernwood.
“The event organizers mischaracterized the true content of the event, and we did not approve any association with the activities the organizers have now advertised,” said Passman. “The event will not be held on CPS property.”
In 2001 a documentary was directed by George Ratliff that focuses on the idea of a hell house, a Christian-themed haunted attraction, in Cedar Hill, Texas. The film follows the youth group of the Cedar Hill Trinity Church, documenting the work involved in creating the hell house, the performances themselves, and the personal lives of some of the participants.
You can watch the trailer below to get an idea of what a Hell House really is.
Donald Trump who spoke on Friday, the two-month anniversary of the Orlando PULSE nightclub massacre, at a gathering of anti-gay Christian conservatives and evangelical pastors” has had the audacity to open a campaign field office directly across the street from the shuttered nightspot where Omar Mateen, a 29-year-old Afghan-American security guard, killed 49 people and wounded 53 others LGBT patrons in a terrorist – hate crime attack.
The location across the street from Pulse – a gay club where 49 people, the majority of them Hispanic, were killed – could be seen as problematic for a campaign struggling so far with Hispanics and the LGBT community.
Trump has been criticized this week by LGBT groups, including Equality Florida, for attending an evangelical pastors event on International Drive that they described as “an anti-LGBT rally.”
Trump – who said the day after the Pulse attack, “Our nation stands together in solidarity with the members of Orlando’s LGBT community” and stressed the danger of ISIS – told the Sentinel Thursday he did not know there were protests.
The gall and insensitivity of this mega-manical douchebag knows no bounds.
Since the shooting at an Orlando nightclub last week that left 49 people dead, reports have emerged that gunman Omar Mateen frequented the gay club, used gay dating apps and had gay lovers.
But the FBI has found no evidence so far to support claims by those who say Mateen had gay lovers or communicated on gay dating apps, several law enforcement officials said.
Mateen, 29, told police negotiators he had carried out the shooting that began at 2 a.m. June 12 and ended, after a three-hour standoff, when he was killed by police.
He claimed the shooting was carried out in allegiance to the militant group Islamic State, as a message to halt U.S. bombing in Iraq and Syria.
Several Pulse regulars have come forward in the days since the shooting, claiming to have seen Mateen at the club or to have been contacted by him on the gay dating apps Grindr, Jack’d and Adam4Adam.
In seeking to verify the reports, federal agents have culled Mateen’s electronic devices, including a laptop computer and cellphone, as well as electronic communications of those who made the claims, law enforcement officials said.
So far, they have found no photographs, no text messages, no smartphone apps, no gay pornography and no cell-tower location data to suggest that Mateen — who was twice married to women and had a young son — conducted a secret gay life, the officials said.
This whole “Omar Manteen was gay” narrative began with Chris Hayes of MSNBC news airing unsubstantiated statements made by Cord Cedeno “who had a gut feeling not to go into Pulse that night” and framing it as news on MSNBC and many news outlets including LGBT venues following suit without any proof.
Federal law enforcement officials said Thursday that the F.B.I. is increasingly skeptical of reports that Mr. Mateen was gay but “closeted,” that he had been visiting gay clubs or that he had used gay dating apps. The bureau has recovered the Samsung phone he used the night of the attack, and is trying to retrieve data from it.
No profiles for Mateen have been found on any gay dating apps such as Grindr, Adam4Adam or Jack’d despite claims by some that they had seen Mateen on the gay sex sites.
Chris Hayes of MSNBC’s All In With Chris Hayes broke the story earlier this week without any substantial evidence to prove any of the accusations.
