Omar Mateen as US citizen, not foreign threat: Homonationalism and LGBTQ online representations of the Pulse nightclub shooting

Abstract

This article focuses on how 377 reports from popular lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) websites represented Omar Mateen, the shooter of the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida, drawing particular attention to the exclusion of Mateen's native-born status. Based on a grounded theory analysis of the five most-trafficked LGBTQ websites, results demonstrate that the reports generally decontextualized Mateen from his country of birth, the USA, and excluded any emphasis on xenophobia or anti-Latinx prejudice as a potential motivating factor in the shooting. Instead, Mateen was usually associated with “terrorism” and sometimes implicitly positioned as a “foreign threat.” These results, building on Jasbir Puar's concept of homonationalism, have implications for LGBTQ positions on the US political left, as the reports typically constructed themselves as anti-Republican and opposed to Islamophobia, while simultaneously reinforcing homonationalist, and relatively conservative, positions.