There are few nice things one can say about the murder of 50 people, the tragic scene that occurred Sunday morning at an Orlando nightclub. Senseless and despicable are the words that come to mind first.

I’ll give this to our society though. In my lifetime we’ve gone from a culture whose attitude towards tragedy in the gay community has gone from reaction to AIDS: serves ’em right for living a deviant lifestyle to one in which people have fallen over themselves to show solidarity with the gay community. That’s in one generation, and that’s progress.

So I guess that’s something. But it’s an awful lesson to learn.