Was Omar Mateen a semi-closeted, self-hating gay man?
This is the troubling question at the heart of America's worst mass shooting in modern history and one currently under investigation by the FBI. Multiple witnesses have told the media that Mateen was a regular at Pulse, the Orlando gay nightclub in which the weekend shooting occurred. A former male friend from the police academy claims Mateen asked him on multiple dates. Mateen's ex-wife, who told reporters he was abusive and mentally ill, also said she believed he had "homosexual tendencies." And it's been widely reported that he solicited dates on the gay dating apps Jack'd and Grindr.
Other reports have characterized Mateen as a homophobe (a logical conclusion judging by the horrific and targeted nature of his crime). Both his father and a former colleague remarked on his habit of making angry anti-gay comments, in addition to racist and sexist ones. In Mateen's father's case, he posted a video the day after the attack saying how saddened he was by his son's mass murder, which was unnecessary since "the issue of gay punishment … is up to God and God punishes them for what they do." This gives us some insight into the views on homosexuality Mateen would have been brought up with – and the kind of internal struggle he might have felt.
But it's hardly an unusual struggle. I know many gay people who grew up in socially conservative families, whether for religious or cultural reasons, and none of them has committed mass murder. In fact, almost all are now living free, open, joyful (and often conventionally married) lives as a result of the social progress that's been made by the LGBT community in recent decades. The closet, for most of the LGBT community in the West, is effectively a thing of the past – the place where the ghosts of Rock Hudson and Liberace occasionally meet up for a Mai Tai and an illicit disco dance with Ed Koch. And yet, in some families, some communities and some troubled, tortured minds, the closet mentality still persists. For those of us living in the free and easy secular new world, it would be wise not to ignore it. Why? Because the closet mentality, especially in conjunction with untreated mental illness, has been proven to be both socially and psychologically dangerous.
Long before Omar Mateen planned and executed his act of anti-gay terrorism, there was evidence that sexually motivated hate is often deeply linked to the suppression of desire.
A 2012 study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology showed that respondents who were most hostile toward gay people and held strong anti-gay views were also far more likely to have undercover same-sex desires. Anti-gay prejudice, the study revealed, was also strongly linked to authoritarian parents with strongly homophobic views.
At the time, co-author Richard Ryan, a professor of psychology at the University of Rochester, said, "If you are feeling that kind of visceral reaction to an out-group, ask yourself, 'Why?' Those intense emotions should serve as a call to self-reflection. Sometimes people are threatened by gays and lesbians because they are fearing their own impulses, in a sense they 'doth protest too much.' In addition, it appears that sometimes those who would oppress others have been oppressed themselves, and we can have some compassion for them too, they may be unaccepting of others because they cannot be accepting of themselves."
The idea that repressed (or simply hidden) sexuality is linked to hatred of the self and others isn't just a theory; it's been illustrated throughout history. The most obvious example is the United States' infamous "lavender scare" of the 1950s, a lesser known corollary to the well-known "red scare" in which Senator Joseph McCarthy embarked on a crusade to purge communists and communist sympathizers from all levels of U.S. government and positions of social influence. Gay people were also viewed as dangerous "subversives" at the time and over just a couple of years nearly 425 State Department employees were fired for allegations of homosexuality, and countless more persecuted. The key architect of the lavender scare was a lawyer named Roy Cohn, who became chief counsel on McCarthy's congressional subcommittee. Together with the enthusiastic support of the FBI, then headed by J. Edgar Hoover, these men embarked on a homophobic witch hunt of staggering social proportions. Cohn and Hoover, it has since emerged, were secretly and actively gay all through the years they worked tirelessly to make life miserable for men like themselves. The presumed psychological reasons for this sort of behaviour are counterintuitive, if not entirely surprising: When we feel conflicted or ashamed, the desire to take out our pain on others can be intense. Torturing those in whom we see our most hated selves reflected can, for some, offer an obvious kind of sadistic pleasure.
Cohn died of AIDS, a disease he insisted was liver cancer, in 1986. His demise – and twisted closet mentality – was dramatized in Tony Kushner's play Angels in America. Hoover, who died of a heart attack in 1972, was eulogized by then-president Richard Nixon for a lifetime of "magnificent achievements."
Since the lavender scare, the United States, and the religious right of the Republican Party in particular, has seen a long string of scandals involving (almost exclusively white and male) politicians who were revealed to be secretly gay while actively campaigning to curb gay rights.
Omar Mateen might have been a self-hating gay man, but he is hardly the first to have terrorized America.