Motive: Jihad or Homophobia?

Who is the bad guy?    Is the Orlando shooting incident proof that Muslims are at war with us?   Or is is proof that gun-crazy haters are subjugating oppressed minorities?

Right now--9:00 a.m. Pacific Time as I start typing--a race is underway to locate a fact or two.  Multiple political interest groups are hoping to frame the event to meet their political needs.  

How can the various partisans define the shooter, Omar Mateen?    Each side wants him to represent the team they oppose.   At this moment the following "facts" seem apparent:

Mateen is Muslim.   (It's Islamic terror!  Points for Fox/Trump/Republicans.)

Mateen was motivated by homophobia, not religion, according to his father. (Points for Diversity/Democrats.)

Mateen was licensed by Florida to carry weapons. (Points for gun control people.)

Mateen was being watched by FBI because of earlier threats. (Mixed points.  It shows that people considered dangerous still get to carry guns, pointing for need for more control, but also shows that we need to be more suspicious and pro-active against questionable profiles, pointing to the need for acting on profile and suspicion.)

Mateen was born in America but to Afghan immigrants. (Points for anti-immigration people.)

Mateen was a licensed security officer. (Points for police skeptics.)

Two news teams race to frame the event.  Was the motivation Islam or was the motivation homophobia? 

Fox:  Islamic terror.  

Fox News Lead Story

Lead sentence:  ISIS.

"A gunman who may have pledged allegiance to ISIS opened fire early Sunday morning in a packed Orlando nightclub, killing 50 people and wounding at least 53 more in a bloody scene that ended hours later when police stormed the building and killed the shooter."

An alternative view, from MSNBC

Lead sentence:  Gay

"At least 50 people are dead and more than 50 others wounded after a gunman opened fire and took hostages at a gay club in Orlando, Florida, early Sunday morning."

The story develops over this hour the stories just added document two very different frames of the Orlando event.  Each side is buttressing their position.

Fox story newly added this hour: It's Islam!

On Fox News the earliest stories included a quotation by Mateen's father, saying that his son was not motivated by religion: "The father claimed the massacre 'had nothing to do with religion.'".    Instead, he was motivated by a recent incident of being offended by seeing two men kissing each other in a men's room.   

But within the hour that quotation has dropped down in the the story and was replaced by comments from his ex wife saying he would beat her if his meals were not prepared to his liking and comments from prominent Republican officeholders speculating on an Islamic motivation.   Example: 

 "The question now is, was this a lone wolf acting, or was he recruited by ISIS? Was he directed by ISIS?" Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., told Fox News.

Meanwhile, on MSNBC:

MSNBC story added this hour:  Quote LGBT spokespeople

"Orlando's gay community is in 'utter shock' and after a mass shooting at a gay nightclub early Sunday morning a local LGVTQ leader said. . . . "

 Muslim jihad or minority oppression?

Over the course of this day and week new information will come in to give a more detailed understanding of the shooter's motives but first impressions will be hard to unseat.  This case will be cited by multiple parties in the campaign.   Trump probably has the easier task.  Matinee was Muslim and for a great many people nothing more need be said.  And Trump will cite the words of the ex wife.  He beat her.  "Muslim immigrant beats wife and shoots fifty."   This is gold for Trump.

The situation is not hopeless for Hillary.  New information will come out and the father pointing the finger at homophobia helps.   If the shooter was a "person of faith" and evidence develops that documents homophobia, then it may fit the Hillary case, particularly if some of the nightclub victims are identifiable as heterosexual.  Heterosexual Americans can console themselves by thinking that it was "that crowd" that got injured, but surely some of the fifty-plus victims were heterosexual (i.e. "regular" Americans) and were killed in the general mayhem.  This tends to document the danger of open prejudice against oppressed minorities.    The advantage, at this moment, seems to be Trump's.   Had the shooter looked like Tim McVey then it would have been advantage-Hillary.   But Omar Mateen is Muslim and the son of immigrants.