Just as I was starting to feel go good about being a gay man living in this country where it is legal to marry another man, and to start seeing the lights turned on making cockroaches of hate scurry for cover, that my happiness got an ugly and sudden reality check.

I have no perfect words for summing up what happened in Orlando. It was a tragedy. It IS a tragedy. So many young lives cut short. I think back to a local bar in Seattle called Neighbors 2 years ago on New Years eve when someone tried to set the place on fire and thanks to quick thinking patrons who saw what was going on saved many many lives by quickly putting it out.

Now, I'm so sore from crying so much and my eyes are so red they blur my reading. I hope we all can come together as one community. Not just gay..but gay, straight, bi, no matter what your sexual preference is and please let us learn from this that life is short, and we are better off to live it in the light of love and not the darkness of hate!