Imagine one night, you were hanging out with your friends and in another second you saw your friend get shot; you are unalarmed, not ready and wasn’t expecting it to happen.

Handphones are ringing around, their family members is calling to make sure they are safe, while all we see are lifeless bodies. And we are thinking, what had gone wrong?

The Orlando massacre is listed as among the worst events in the United States, which took place in a gay club, ‘Pulse’, and killed 50 people, the earliest sources confirmed.

As the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) community exists everywhere around the world and is specifically celebrating the Pride Month; this has affected the community, raising the question: Where is a safe space for them? In a club which they does not bother the heterosexual community, they were killed without mercy.

The rainbow comes out after the storm; a lot of people actually helped the victims by donating blood, and raised fund which is started by Equality Florida here. This is so heart-warming; the whole world is actually helping each other and easing those in trouble.

Malaysian reaction towards the shooting

Reading the reaction of Malaysians towards the Orlando massacre truly hits me right to the core. There’s a lot of Malaysian out there who supported the act by Omar Mateen, because he “was angry when he saw two men kissing”, as told by his father. Most of the reactions are “it’s okay to kill gay people”, “God has damned the LGBT community”.

This got me thinking, for God’s sake, it’s the Holy Month of Ramadan and people think it’s okay to take someone’s life, who had never bothered them before? You don’t even know the person, what they do; they might be a professor, an astronaut, a doctor, someone which is very valuable to society. And it’s okay to get rid of people just because they aren’t similar to us?

How does a person call himself or herself a human being, and yet doesn’t have humanity? A lot of parents are mourning for their fallen children, and some of us are proud that someone actually killed a group of people who were minding their own business?

It is possible that in the future, the same act of terror will happen in the country where the people says it is okay to take away someone’s life because it’s not up to the norm of the society. It is a threat to the minority who live in fear, who are still closeted and those who are not comfortable with their sexuality.

What is right and what is wrong is hardly defined in the Malaysian society, and a lot of misconceptions regarding the LGBT community have influenced the way we view them. It is not fair to compare Malaysia to other countries which are LGBT-friendly, but tolerance and acceptance towards these differences will create a better society to live in.

We need to start seeing each other as human, nothing more and nothing less. When that time comes, we know exactly that our differences, our prejudice and need to discriminate, will end.

“No one is equal unless everyone is equal.” - Jeffree Star