Orlando gunman Omar Mateen’s wife feared he would do something drastic and violent when he left their home on Saturday night, but he assured her he was just going to meet his friends. Authorities are now investigating how much 30-year old Noor Zahi Salman actually knew about her husband’s plans to attack the gay nightclub Pulse. Whether she will face any criminal charges is still unclear.

Both “Scoped Out” Orlando Locations

According to recent reports, Mateen had his wife drive him to Pulse nightclub in Orlando earlier in June to “scope it out.” They lived two hours away, in Port St. Lucie. They also looked into other locations, such as Disney World and the shopping complex Disney Springs. Salman was also with Mateen when he bought ammunition and a holster. Investigators said it’s unclear whether she knew of his eventual intentions at the time, though an anonymous law enforcement source told Reuters that she did. She could face criminal charges as early as Wednesday.

Gay Pride, Ramadan, and Solidarity After Orlando… https://t.co/VX4UwUW2m1 pic.twitter.com/w9Bk3heK2H

— LGBT NYC (@lgbtnyc015) June 15, 2016

Responding to speculation over whether or not Mateen was secretly gay, his father Seddique Mateen said that his son’s marriage was good and that if he were gay his wife of three and a half years would have known about it. He also said that Mateen was really upset when he once saw two men kissing. However, regulars at Pulse nightclub said Mateen came there frequently to meet men.

Mateen was married twice, and his ex-wife described their five-month marriage in 2009 as violent and abusive, calling him bipolar and emotionally disturbed. He would beat her, pull her hair, and keep her from seeing her family. She also told TIME that he had some behaviors that “most straight men don’t”, such as spending a long time in front of the mirror and “little movements with his body.”

ISIS Twitter accounts hacked to show support for gay pride message https://t.co/m42lYrURSK pic.twitter.com/rig116zlHt

— Dennis Jansen (@dennisjansen) June 15, 2016

A Complicated Picture

The motive for the shootings is still unclear. Mateen pledged allegiance to ISIS when he called 911 during the attack at Pulse, but according to authorities he was self-radicalized over the Internet and there are no signs of a connection to the organization. Opinions about his personal life differ, with his father calling him homophobic, and his ex-wife thought he wasn’t “totally straight.” Neighbors described him as a completely normal man, while gay men he met at Pulse said he was “strange.”

The mass shooting in Orlando is the largest in US history and killed 49 people and leaving 53 injured. Even though FBI investigated the shooter in 2013 and 2014, he was legally able to buy weapons and ammunition. He was killed after a three-hour standoff with police.

Read Law Street’s original post about the Pulse attack here.

Emma Von Zeipel

Emma Von Zeipel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. She is originally from one of the islands of Stockholm, Sweden. After working for Democratic Voice of Burma in Thailand, she ended up in New York City. She has a BA in journalism from Stockholm University and is passionate about human rights, good books, horses, and European chocolate. Contact Emma at EVonZeipel@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Orlando Shooter’s Wife Knew About Attack, Could Face Charges appeared first on Law Street.

So, this week in LesboLand… K-Stew’s mom apparently outed her (in a week of oh so many highly public parental outings); Orange is the New Black basically broke the internet; and Wells Fargo is the latest massive corporation to want to use white lesbians to make a profit.

It must be Pride Month.

(Or just another week in the life of lesbian drama. I’m not picky about cause and effect.)

I came out a decade ago, and a decade ago, I didn’t know about Pride Month. (WE GET OUR OWN MONTH. Which is upsetting for all kinds of reasons related to heteronormativity and the fact that mainstream Prides are so super white-washed and corporatized…but I told myself when I sat down to write this that I wouldn’t be quite as ornery as I usually am. Let’s see how that goes.)

Today, my bedside table has not one, not two, but three stacks–borderline obnoxiously sized stacks (this is not a massive bedside table we’re talking about here)–of queer YA books on it, not to mention a couple of nifty (if not overpriced) Babeland products, and my YA fantasy novel manuscript (spoiler alert: QUEERNESS).

Over a decade ago, I skittishly went online–remember this sound??–and, sweat forming on my upper lip, copy-pasted into Word Perfect as many Star Trek: Voyager fan fiction stories under the “femslash” category as I could. I would read them nervously, quickly, always ready to click into another document with my AP U.S. outlines open, my eyes stuck on one part of the screen as I created a scroll-effect from holding down the delete key as I read.

Erasing the evidence of my queerness (because I didn’t recognize it–though everyone else did–in my flannel, keys-on-belt-loop, thumbs-hooked-into-pockets, all-I-ever-think-about-is-women…ness), even though I didn’t know that’s what it was.

Today, I make no effort to hide my queerness. It’s not something that occurs to me anymore. And there’s a lot of privilege wrapped up in that. I know. I know.

And I feel it every time the OITNB theme song whines out of my roommate’s bedroom (or my own)–we’re still so starving for “representation”–often, no matter what the racist cost of that representation.

Because if OITNB weren’t mediated by a blonde white woman; if The Fosters didn’t positively portray such a brutal and racist criminal justice system; if mainstream Prides were still protests, marches against intersectional systemic oppression rather than white-dominated, corporate parties.

I wonder what Pride Month would look like in the mainstream media.

(And there’s the orneriness.)

But we need to stay ornery. Because yep, we are everywhere. But we’re also oppressed by white-supremacist, heteropatriarcal, ableist systems.

Everywhere.

Jennifer Polish

Jennifer Polish is an English PhD student at the CUNY Graduate Center in NYC, where she studies non/human animals and the racialization of dis/ability in young adult literature. When she’s not yelling at the computer because Netflix is loading too slowly, she is editing her novel, doing activist-y things, running, or giving the computer a break and yelling at books instead. Contact Jennifer at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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It’s St. Patrick’s Day, and like every year, it’s celebrated nationwide with green-hued parades. New York City’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade is the nation’s largest and, at 250 years running, the oldest. But today they made history by becoming LGBT friendly. OUT@NBCUniversal, a corporate group for gay employees of NBCUniversal, became the first gay group to march in the parade. However still unsatisfied with its level of inclusion, Mayor Bill de Blasio and the City Council boycotted the parade for the second year in a row.

Congrats to @OUTNBCUniversal, making a wee bit o’history today: pic.twitter.com/ZhpD1DIpcD

— Mark Joyella (@standupkid) March 17, 2015

Organizers of the parade banned LGBT organizations for decades from participating in the event based on Roman Catholic opposition to homosexuality. The ban did not explicitly ban LGBT members from marching, but rather prohibited them from carrying banners marking them as LGBT. Last fall, organizers announced that they would finally be lifting the ban this year in response to public protest and loss of corporate sponsors including beer giants Heineken and Guinness.

According to USA Today, NBCUniversal Executive Vice President and Chief Diversity Officer Craig Robinson issued a statement saying:

We approach the opportunity with respect for the event’s heritage, culture and tradition, as well as hope and excitement for this first step towards an increasingly inclusive era for the parade.

Cities such as Boston and Washington D.C. allowed gay groups to participate in their St. Patrick’s Day parades this year as well, but with over 300 organizations marching in NYC’s parade, some still aren’t impressed with the parade’s admittance of only one LGBT org.  According to MSNBC, Mayor Bill de Blasio refused to walk again this year, opting to instead participate earlier this month in an alternative St. Patrick’s Day parade, known as the St. Pat’s for All parade. That event promotes equality and acceptance. De Blasio’s office issued a statement explaining the mayor’s decision saying:

St. Patrick’s Day parades from Boston to Dublin have opened their arms to the LGBT community. The decision by the 5th Avenue parade organizers to include one group from NBC, while a step in the right direction, is still not inclusive enough. The mayor hopes more progress can be made soon, and the parade will be more inclusive in the future, and if that happens he will be happy to participate. But until then, he will continue to decline to march.

He does have a point. One out of 300 is hardly a bastion of equality, and I’m impressed with De Blasio’s persistence in standing up for equal opportunities for all of his constituents. The Catholic Church’s views on matters like homesexuality and contraception have loosened in recent years under the leadership of Pope Francis, but the parade’s outdated lack of acceptance is not representative of that. De Blasio and others’ boycott of the parade sends a message to officials that they’ve made a nice start but they can do better still.

Alexis Evans

Alexis Evans is an Assistant Editor at Law Street and a Buckeye State native. She has a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism and a minor in Business from Ohio University. Contact Alexis at aevans@LawStreetMedia.com.

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