Posted this week in Orlando Sentinel’s CF100: Community Portrait
COMMUNITY PORTRAIT. Having just returned from a family vacation abroad for the past two weeks, we had the unique opportunity to view international sentiment about our Orlando tragedy through the eyes of dozens of television broadcasts, newspaper articles, and residents from multiple countries and all walks of life. The portrait that emerged was comforting, inspiring and unanimous: deep and genuine solidarity from nations who have suffered their own horrors of terrorism, abhorrence at the fanatical hatred directed to the gay community, and immense sympathy for an Orlando that has emerged as a vibrant, diverse, loving, and accepting community far more expansive than our reputation for theme parks might have suggested.