Dateline, Pride Under Fire

Transcript

Welcome to Louisville, Kentucky. It's been less than a week since the tragic Orlando massacre and we're here to see what Middle America is feeling about everything since its worst mass shooting in recent history. Predictably, the debating's already started: There's home phobia, there’s Islam phobia, there's gun control, there's terrorism. And we're also here because Louisville is celebrating its gay Pride weekend so there's a lot going on.

MAN:  We're real excited, things are going to be… a big turn-out but after Orlando, who knows.

At one of Louisville's gay clubs, staff are gearing up for what should be the biggest party of the year.

MAN:  Hey buddy, how much more have you got to do? Alright excellent, it’s looking good.

But the Pride celebrations here fall on the one-week anniversary of the massacre in Orlando so emotions are high.

TRAVIS PHELPS, BARMAN:   I'm not comparing 49 lives to 3,000 but this has been a 9/11 moment for my community.

Owner Todd Roman is also edgy about this weekend. He actually took a call from someone inside the Orlando nightclub on the night of the attack.

TODD ROMAN, CO-OWNER PLAY DANCE BAR:  We didn't have any details. They just said that they were trapped and that someone was shooting. I have to admit that that was probably the most emotional experience I'd ever had in the business. I've been doing clubs for over 30 years now.

CHRIS HARTMAN, FAIRNESS CAMPAIGN DIRECTOR:  The helium balloons, right - what do we do with the helium balloons?

Across town at the headquarters of the Fairness campaign, an LGBT activist group, director Chris Hartman is getting ready for another big event, today's Pride Parade.

CHRIS HARTMAN:  It's certainly been an emotional week for everyone in the LGBTQ community. Here we go.

CROWD:  Here we go. We are Orlando! We are Orlando! We are Orlando!

It was thought that people might avoid the parade out of fear this year but the Orlando tragedy seems to have had the opposite effect, with thousands turning out in support.

WOMAN:  I would like to see it result in stricter gun control laws and things like that so we'll see what happens, you know. It's a big hot-button issue in America for some reason.

CROWD:  Racism, sexism, we say no! Homophobia's got to go!

Todd from Play nightclub's here along with some friends.

TODD ROMAN:  This is the largest crowd that we've ever seen at this.

WOMAN IN CROWD:  Hi, baby!

There's still fear and anger here over Orlando but the parade is a show of defiance and community.

MAN IN CROWD:  I think people realise now that it doesn't matter whether you're homosexual, Jewish, German, whatever. Nobody's safe and we have to all stand together.

MAN 2 IN CROWD:  Got lot of very uneducated people that have embraced Donald Trump and they hate Muslims one day and they hate gays the next.

Also marching is another minority group under attack at present. Mohammad Barbar is from the Louisville Islamic Centre.

DR MUHAMMAD BABAR, LOUISVILLE ISLAMIC CENTER: We got here to show our support to our brothers and sisters from LGBT community, especially in the wake of this tragedy. So as a Muslim-American, I am feeling their pain.

REPORTER:  Is it your first Pride Parade?

DR MUHAMMAD BABAR: Yes, it is my first but not the last.

For Chris and the Fairness campaign, the show of support is overwhelming.

CROWD:  Fairness!

REPORTER:  How was that?

CHRIS HARTMAN:  Incredible. You know, there were some goosebumps moments along the way for sure, to see the huge outpouring of support. It was just palpable. You could feel the community. 
Sadly, this tragedy in Orlando might be the impetus that really mobilises and motivates folks to come out, show their support to their elected officials and actually make some change.

Orlando saw the devastating combination of terror, gay hate and a killer with an assault rifle.

WOMAN:  She called me and told me she was shot in her arm and she was screaming and hollering and I don't know anything else.

MOTHER:  No-one can tell me where my son is.

MOTHER 2: He's a good kid. He works at Universal and I'm just hoping we find him. That's all I want.

49 people died, mostly LGBT people of colour. 53 more were injured. The shooter, Omar Mateen, was labelled a Muslim extremist, unstable and with easy access to weapons.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA:  Those who defend the easy accessibility of assault weapons should meet these families and explain why that makes sense and why it that we think our -- why it is that we think our liberties requires these repeated tragedies. That's not the meaning of liberty.

The President's call for restrictions on assault weapons rings hollow here at this Louisville gun shop.

BARRY LAWS, CEO OPENRANGE GUN STORE:  Why isn't everybody pissed off at Obama and the Justice Department and FBI and every law enforcement official that let this guy fall through the cracks? Why do these people just get passed along in our world and nobody does anything about it and then there’s “oh my god!” and then it's the gun's fault, right. No, it's society's fault for not taking care of this stuff... Drives me crazy… Sorry.   All you need to do is grab this, put it somewhere else. One person gets on it, another person gets on it.

Barry Laws shows me an assault rifle similar to that used in Orlando.

BARRY LAWS:  This right now, if this gun were completely loaded, it's not going to hurt you, right. But people are so conditioned because of movies, politicians and law enforcement that these things are the most dangerous objects in the world: That you just have to run when there's one around.

He believes young, fit men in the Orlando nightclub could have disarmed the killer.

BARRY LAWS:  Think of this as a baseball bat. Could you not grab this somewhere? I mean, there's the possibility of grabbing that. That's where my anger comes from, is the training of our society to almost be neutered and it the strangest thing and it's almost like the world wants to neuter America now. We don't want to - no offence - turn into Australia or any other country that has been neutered. 
Yeah, you might think we're whacked but there's method to our madness.

I must admit it isn't easy to see much method in the madness, just a re-ignited national debate over guns with the shouting getting louder. It's even legal to walk around carrying a gun. Gary Brice came face to face with one while working at a diner just one week before Orlando.

GARY BRICE:  It was like a typical Monday night in here. Started doing my cleaning in the middle of the night, you know, not many customers coming through at that time.

An angry customer turned on him. Homophobia and the rampant gun culture were about to combine.

GARY BRICE:  One of her friends called me gay, one of them called me a fag. I remember one saying, "This fag is not worth it. Let's go." She started throwing things, she took my tip jar and in the process pulled a pistol out on me and put it in my face. Then she just stayed there and I ran all the way back here and into this bathroom. Yeah, it was pretty scary.

REPORTER:  So the Orlando bathroom aspect really resonated with you because this only happen to you two weeks ago?

GARY BRICE:  Yeah. It was just - I just understood that I was about to die so hearing those stories about those people, 15, 20 people huddle together in a bathroom literally waiting to die, that made me very emotional because I know that feeling because I've been right here in this bathroom, literally cowering in the corner waiting to die.

After the hype of the Pride Parade, Chris Hartman still has the Orlando shootings on his mind.

CHRIS HARTMAN:  It was undeniable it was targeted at LGBTQ folks and also undeniable it was targeted at LGBTQ folks of colour. Not just what we've seen in Orlando but we've lost dozens of transgender and gender non-conforming people of colour in the past year and a half and the epidemic has got to stop and folks aren't talking about it near enough.

Chris is taking me on a journey to conservative rural Kentucky.

REPORTER:  Where are we now?

CHRIS HARTMAN:  We’re about a couple of miles out of the city limit for Louisville so we'll be passing in to an area that doesn't include discrimination protections for LGBTQ folks.

I'm learning that each county can pass its own anti-discrimination laws, or not. And, like more than 75% of Kentucky, Shelbyville hasn't.

CHRIS HARTMAN:   Meaning that if I live in Shelbyville or if I work in Shelbyville, I could be terminated from my job, denied a place to live or be kicked out of a restaurant or any public accommodation just for being lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender.

Chris has been working for five years here to try and get anti-discrimination laws but with no luck.

REPORTER:  That must be frustrating.

CHRIS HARTMAN:  It's incredibly frustrating and you know, we've taken every tactic we could. We've been patient, we've asked kindly, we've protested, we've shown up in numbers and yet almost no acknowledgment.

REPORTER:  So this magnificent Shelbyville courthouse is of very little use to someone like yourself?

CHRIS HARTMAN:  Right, for LGBTQ folks who face discrimination, the halls of justice are really closed to them and so I have been working with a young individual who was transitioning on the job, is a transgender individual and, sure enough, right after they had been promoted, once they began their transition, they were demoted.

That person is Michael Cartron or Juju as she prefers to be known.

MICHAEL ‘JUJU’ CARTRON:  I don't know that Kentucky has moved past the 40s or 50s yet unless you could live in a big city like Louisville or even Lexington maybe.

Juju worked for years in a small restaurant but after recently beginning to transition from male to female she was confronted by her boss.

MICHAEL ‘JUJU’ CARTRON:   He made it clear to me that he knew he could fire me because I was gay or transgender and legally there was nothing I could do to fight back. He made it clear that I could be killed and someone could use the panic defence and I would be dead somewhere and someone could get away with that.

REPORTER:  He said that to you, you could be killed and perhaps someone would get away with it?

MICHAEL ‘JUJU’ CARTRON:  Yeah. I feel lonely. My entire life has been spent in the countryside and growing up and having to fight to just accept myself, not even find someone else's acceptance, was tough and now to be an adult and have someone strip that away from me with no help from the law is heart-breaking.

The LGBT community in America has a lot of issues to deal with right now and they've always had grief from America's conservative Christians. You don't go far in Kentucky without meeting people of deep Christian faith. Today, Frank Simon from the American Family Association is broadcasting to his many followers.

FRANK G. SIMON MD, AMERICAN FAMILY ASSOCIATION:   I'm with Ed Holloway and God bless you and tune in next week for the rest of the news. Thank you. I tell you, that's great.

Advances in gay rights like the Marriage Equality Bill last year have prompted a concerted backlash from the Christian Right.

FRANK G. SIMON:   So we have problems with the Supreme Court trying to redefine marriage and redefine all this so that they say, "Well, now, marriage is between two men and their daughter and the neighbourhood dog," and all of this stuff.

And there's also the issue of Muslims. Frank is very clear in his view about the reason for the Orlando attacks.

FRANK G. SIMON:  Well, you know, the thing is the Muslim religion is an antigay religion, okay, and they have been pushing homosexuals off of buildings and stoning 'em and doing things like that for a long time and that's all part of their religion so, you know, that why we have to be careful about trying to bring Sharia law into America or trying to bring more and more Muslims, especially the terrorists, into America.

Not so long ago these would have been arguments from the fringe. Now they're at the heart of the election campaign.

DONALD J. TRUMP:  Donald J Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what the hell is going on.

And the fact that this is now a mainstream political idea leaves others stunned.

DR MUHAMMAD BABAR:   Mr Trump may be able to become the President of United States of America but at what cost? How many people will be demonised? How many lives will be lost? This is the question which history will answer for us.

Dr Muhammad Babar, who I met at the Pride march, represents another minority whose views are being drowned out as the national debate turns ugly. As a Muslim, it must be tough being blamed for terrorism, Orlando, maybe even the bad weather. Now his place of worship has worn the hate. Late last year, graffiti was sprayed everywhere.

DR MUHAMMAD BABAR: This whole drain was painted red like the blood is gushing down and then the arrow mark says “Kill you.”  We have not faced this much hatred and Islam phobia even after the tragedy of 9/11. It is much, much worse than 9/11. These are very difficult times to be a Muslim in America.

Muhammad has been on an emotional roller coaster recently, the Orlando massacre came just after the death of Louisville's most famous son. As he was laid to rest here in his home town, Muslim hate seemed to be on hold.

IMAM: With Muslim tradition and consistent with the wishes of Mohammed Ali.

DR MUHAMMAD BABAR:  The memorial on Friday, boy, I have never felt as proud as Muslim-American during my last 20 years in America. Then I heard the news on Sunday morning that Orlando tragedy has happened and the shooter is probably Muslim. It was like somebody punched me in my gut and we as a community, we thought, "Boy, there is going to be a backlash again," and all the good will and vibes of compassion that were generated by Ali's memorial and funeral, that it will be overshadowed by this guy's actions.

What's your plan for the evening?

CHILDREN: To play with friends.

Muhammad is home alone for Ramadan, his twin boys are away on holidays with his wife.

DR MUHAMMAD BABAR:  I'll talk to you again tonight, okay.

CHILDREN:  Okay!

DR MUHAMMAD BABAR:  Thank you. Stay safe. Bye-bye.

Muhammad says he is now so worried for his family he's considered drastic solutions.

DR MUHAMMAD BABAR:  I have thought to own a gun few times and quite honestly it comes across my mind repeatedly but then I believe that this is not the solution.

SONG:  Because I'm happy # Come along if you feel like a room without a roof...

Saturday night has arrived and it seems the Play nightclub is the place to be but not everyone is heading out tonight. Gary Brice, who faced the woman with the gun in the diner, is spending the evening in with his partner Terence. After Orlando, where many of the victims were people of colour, he says he feels safest at home and he's contemplating what it means to be a minority within a minority - gay and black.

GARY BRICE:  Gay is something that is, you know, for lot of communities of colour considered to be white and so then you're marginalised by your sexuality within your own community but then you're also marginalised within the gay community for being a person of colour because of racism and although a lot of people may not feel like they're individually racist or prejudiced, the institutions are still very racist.

Back at the nightclub, the party's in full swing.

TODD ROMAN:  Tonight was extremely important in light of the Orlando tragedy, seeing the community come together is really healing.

Despite the party, there's plenty of reflection as well.

ARTIST: So we're going to perform the Last Dance by Donna Summers, ladies and gentlemen, and it's going towards the victims of Orlando and the tragedy. So, without further ado, help me welcome...

It seems America's so deeply divided right now, it's hard to know if tragedies like Orlando can ever be a catalyst for change.

Reporter 
Dean Cornish

Story Producers
Ronan Sharkey
Geoff Parish

Camera
Dean Cornish
Ronan Sharkey

Researchers
Phil Ly
Stephanie Garnaut

Story Editor
Ryan Walsh
David Potts

Titles Music
Vicki Hansen

28 th June 2016