Norway Massacre

 I've had a hard time wrapping my head around the massacre that took place in Norway.  I'm glad that the death toll has been reduced from 92 to 77, and hope that those who have been hospitalized recover fully.  This was an act of terrorism, no doubt.  What made it more shocking was the fact that the terrorist was home-grown.  This was the equivalent of the Oklahoma City bombing for Norway, although proportionally much worse.  Norway is a small peaceful country of under 5 million people.  If you compared the victims in proportion to the whole population and then compare that to the US population, it would be the equivalent of a massacre of 4,777 Americans.  That's more than all the people who died in the 9/11 attacks. It's no wonder the Norwegian people are in such a state of shock.

As the news continued to stream in I kept hoping for some uplifting heroic stories to be brought to light, but never did hear any.  After a while I just assumed that I missed them.  Then today a friend posted a link to a story of two women who were staying (and dining outside) on the shore opposite the campsite.  They heard gunshots and screams, and instead of taking cover in their home, they sprang to action, got in their boat and went to the campsite and picked up injured kids and brought them to safety.  Not just once, but 4 times.  All told they were able to save 40 people. I never heard this story before, never saw it mentioned in the news. 

Why not? The going theory is that mainstream media squashed the story because the two women are a married lesbian couple.What does that matter?  To me it is completely irrelevant.  These women did something incredibly brave and their heroism should be celebrated. Now just to be clear, because when I commented on my friend's post she misunderstood me, I have no problem whatsoever with gays or lesbians. I'm not saying you should leave out the fact that they were lesbians, because I have anything against lesbianism. I get infuriated by all kinds of discrimination, and I feel to even mention their sexual orientation is discrimination. They wouldn't print that a "straight couple" saved 40 people, so why even mention it at all? Another theory is that the American news media has been so caught up in the debt crisis that there was no time to mention this story. I hope that is true, but with a 24 hour news cycle, I find that hard to believe.  For what it's worth, below is a link to the story via blog post from "Talk About Equality"

Lesbian Couple Saved 40 people in Norway

 I hope that someday we can live in a world where people no longer revert to discrimination and prejudice and just accept people no matter what their differences.  A person should be judged by their character not their sexual orientation, race, color or creed.