My two cents? Stop making such a big deal out of it. These things happen because someone wants the country as a whole to freak out. They want their names to ring out as martyrs to a cause. But no one cares about martyrs they've never heard of. I remember after the shooting at that community college in Washington, the local police chief refused to release the name of the shooter, saying in essence that publicity was exactly what he wanted. Of course the media found out and reported the hell out of it anyway. But I firmly believe the police chief was right. We should turn our backs on these people, not put them up on a pedestal. But, this kind of self-restraint is apparently far too difficult for us. So instead we'll blame Islam (or Abrahamic religions generally) or guns, and suggest that maybe someone's constitutional rights should be denied because of whom they associate with. After all, we've seen time after time how giving more power to the government and blaming some minority or other has led to greater stability for all.What must be done to prevent anything like this from happening again?
No. It is a big deal. People love to tell the LGBT community that we've got our rights and we should stop complaining about the very real threats that still exist. A large gathering of LGBT folx is still a brave political act precisely because of events like this. I agree that publicizing the shooter is the wrong thing to do, but people want to blame someone and being able to shift the blame to ISIS instead of continuing American homophobia helps people distance themselves from tragedies like this.
While I agree that we shouldn't be giving fame to the shooter, I think the fact that this was pretty clearly a hate crime complicates the idea that we should, or even can, ignore it. For people in the LGBT community, this is a very clear reminder that there are still people who want us dead just for existing. That marriage equality doesn't magically make us no longer a target - if anything, it deepens the hatred that some people felt already. The name of this shooter doesn't matter, I agree. It doesn't matter because he is not an anomaly, he is not an outlier. His hate is not uncommon, and his violence is no different in intention - only scale - from the violence that queer folks deal with every day. His name doesn't matter. Matthew Shepard's does. The only thing that makes this different from Laramie is that there are too many victims to remember the names. Edit: in fairness, I am probably willfully misinterpreting what you meant by "not make a big deal out of this", but this is just a topic I have strong feelings on.
Yeah, I more meant in terms of publicity. I get that we should recognize hate crimes, sure. But I'm not sure about the trade-offs involved here. Assuming I'm right, i.e. that this would reduce mass shootings, isn't that the most important outcome? I don't know if there's a middle ground.