Lenny Curry talks Orlando Pulse tragedy, acknowledges LGBT people were targets

A Friday afternoon phone call with Jacksonville Mayor Lenny Curry revealed the mayor’s thoughts about the Orlando Pulse tragedy, and the way forward.

“There ought to be things we all can agree on,” Curry said.

For starters, “a young man perpetrated a terrorist attack.”

There can be, Curry said, a “productive conversation if we all can agree on that.”

Curry has, he said, been listening to the cable news discussions, and “sitting and reflecting” on the massacre of 49 people in Orlando.

Curry has been criticized for not mentioning that the victims of the attack were predominately LGBT, and that the attack was targeted at an LGBT club.

He was very forthright about those realities in our Friday conversation, saying Americans have been attacked, and that those Americans were LGBT and were at a “gay club.”

“Hearts are broken,” Curry said.

“My heart is breaking,” Curry said, regarding the “victims in the club.”

“If we can find a way to agree that ISIS attacked Orlando, attacked a gay club and LGBT people,” Curry said, “the healing process can start.”

Curry, who spoke to FloridaPolitics.com earlier this week in the wake of the assertions by Pastor Ken Adkins that the victims were “getting what they deserve,” was appalled by those comments.

“This has been a conversation in our house for two days,” Curry said Tuesday, adding any rhetoric that “suggests that people should be victims is appalling.”

Some have criticized the mayor for not mentioning LGBT people in his public responses to the Orlando tragedy up until now.

The “Dear Orlando” postcard campaign, for example, was described as “tone-deaf” and not acknowledging those killed and injured as being targeted because of sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression.

Meanwhile, there are social conservative Republicans who have lit the mayor up on Facebook, with at least one saying that Curry promised him he would “protect our families,” a phrase with meanings that go beyond the seemingly innocuous framing.

Curry’s responses will seem to some to be deliberate. They will seem to some to be too much. And that’s the paradox of leadership of a community divided on an issue that ineluctably has taken center stage locally, due to the proximity of Orlando, and the tortuous process to enacting an expanded Human Rights Ordinance.