Long Beach LGBTQ leader: Orlando shooter is a victim, too. Read the full speech

A spokesman for Long Beach’ robust LGBTQ community on Thursday night gave a speech in response to the Orlando shooting. His words had a provocative and unexpected message: the shooter, Porter Gilberg said, is a victim too.

The man who killed 49 people at a gay nightclub June 12 was a victim of hateful, anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim rhetoric pervasive in today’s national conversation, said Gilberg, executive director of the LGBTQ Center Long Beach.

The audience at Temple Israel in Belmont Heights applauded.

We are reprinting the speech in full, unedited. What do you think? We’d like to hear your feedback:

“Good evening. I am honored and deeply moved to be in this room with all of you here tonight. Our community, our Long Beach, is incredible. From our mayor, who spoke eloquently and honestly at Sunday’s vigil about the sense of community, he felt closeted, and frequenting Latin nights at LGBTQ bars; to Temple Israel reaching out to The Center to see how they can support our community.

Tonight and every night our LGBTQ community is not alone in our grief or in our love and compassion for our own. In the last five days, counselors from many agencies have come forward to volunteer around the clock at The Center to provide crisis support; communities of faith have stepped forward to provide spaces to heal; and other organizations and individuals have reached out to see how they can support all of us.

Thank you to each of the faith leaders here tonight for holding us up. Thank you to each of you for holding me up. There is tremendous grief in our hearts tonight. Over the last five days I have witnessed unimaginable sadness, pain, sorrow and fear.

We lost 50 lives on Sunday. With love in my heart, with compassion for those who refuse to show compassion to me and my community, I will acknowledge the perpetrator of the Orlando nightclub massacre as a victim too.

In a nation that is honestly debating whether to ban Muslims from entering this country, in a nation that uses oppression of LGBTQ people as a wedge issue to tu out voters and gaer political support, in a nation that uses immigrants to incite fear and mistrust in order to drive a wedge between poor, struggling, and marginalized communities, I will acknowledge that this climate contributed to the individual emotional decimation and eventual violence committed against LGBTQ people on Sunday.

I will have compassion for him and others who wish to do me harm because I am queer. And I will speak out in the face of injustice, intolerance, discrimination, and oppression aimed at those most marginalized in our community.

A lot of folks have been have saying that love wins. And in the face of this tragedy, many, including those closest to me, have begun to question that. My faith in love conquering hate and injustice has only grown stronger, but I see a great need for us as a community to actually define what love looks like.

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To me, love is acknowledging that I am hurting. Love means telling you that I know what it feels like to be treated differently, with dismissiveness and subtle derision, both within and outside the LGBTQ community because I am queer and gender non-conforming.

Love is knowing that our grief is very individual and may look like anger, stoicism, irritability, or nothing at all. Love is acknowledging the particular impact this tragedy is having on Latinx [a gender-neutral term used to describe those of Latin descent] and Muslim communities and speaking out against ignorance and intolerance when it stands before me.

Love is me saying I do not feel safe in a country where hundreds of mass shootings take place every year, perpetrated by people with easy access to semi-automatic rifles that serve no functional purpose in our communities, and that LGBTQ people are just the latest high profile target.

Love is listening to my friends who are women, people of color, and Muslim when they tell me that they experience fear and discrimination beyond my own personal comprehension. Love is paying attention to how I treat these friends and acknowledging when I have misspoken out of ignorance, and pushing through my personal shame and guilt to be a better ally to them.

To me, love is having the strength to step outside into a world that has told me repeatedly through legislative efforts, through acts of violence, through making me feel both invisible and hypervisible at the same time, that I do not belong and that I am not welcome. Love is being present and stepping forward through the fear into living the life I want for myself while demonstrating compassion towards others, always knowing but never expecting that my compassion will be retued.

Love wins when love is a verb, moving us towards meaningful action to make our communities safer, more affirming and intentionally inclusive.

I love each and every one of you in this room tonight. Together we will continue to grieve, but we will not grieve alone. And I certainly don’t want to love in isolation. Tell someone, anyone what love means to you tonight and love will win.

I guarantee it.”