Omar Mateen’s participation in the LGBTQ+ community that he attacked challenges the simplistic US vs ISIL binary

In the days since Sunday’s tragic mass shooting at an LGBTQ+ nightclub in Orlando, Florida, it has come to light that the attacker who killed 49 people that night, Omar Mateen, may himself have been part of the LGBTQ+ community. Diana Popescu writes that Mateen’s participation in the LGBTQ+ community both challenges and entrenches the issue’s framing as both an attack against an oppressed minority group and one of the US vs ISIL conflict.