A heavily armed man who said he was heading to a gay pride parade in Los Angeles was arrested early on Sunday, Mayor Eric Garcetti said.
[RELATED: 50 killed in Florida nightclub shooting]
Garcetti, speaking Sunday at the opening of the LA Pride Festival, expressed his horror at the massacre at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, early that morning, and said it appeared the arrest near Los Angeles was unrelated to the Florida attack, in which 50 people were killed and 53 injured.
Despite the Florida terror attack and the arrest locally, the Los Angles festival proceeded as planned in West Hollywood. Garcetti said the arrest occurred after a tip from a suspicious resident. FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller said the arrest was made by Santa Monica police and that the FBI was assisting in the investigation. Santa Monica Police declined to comment on the incident and referred calls to the FBI, as did the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department, which also assisted in the arrest.
Rabbi Denise Eger, senior rabbi of Congregation Kol Ami in West Hollywood and president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis learned about the Florida massacre in a text from Kol Ami's rabbinic student as she was preparing for the Shavuot morning holiday service. The devastating news came after a long night at a teach-in with seven other Reform synagogues at Stephen Wise Temple.
A vigil to mourn the lives lost and to honor the wounded in the Florida attack will be held Monday, June 13 at 7 p.m. at Los Angeles City Hall, 200 N. Spring St.
The news, Eger said, quickly put a damper on a would-be festival weekend that began with a Friday evening gay pride service at Kol Ami.
“We prayed for the welfare of lesbian, gay and transgender people; we prayed for our straight allies and friends,” Eger said in a Sunday morning phone call with the Journal. “And then you wake up the day after Shabbos in the midst of supposedly a holiday where we’re wishing each other ‘hag sameach’ [happy holiday].”
Eger added, “I said to my congregation this morning, ‘I don’t really feel like I can do the joy part this morning.’ I can’t wish them a happy holiday.”
Eger is a Reform leader whose resume is studded with barrier-breaking firsts for a lesbian Rabbi. On Shavuot morning, she called out a climate of intolerance amid “this era of terrible backlash, unnecessary backlash after last years’ great victory of marriage equality.”
“I actually want to blame a lot of politicians, and frankly fundamentalists,” she said. “I don’t just single out Christian fundamentalists, but fundamentalists of all stripes, including in our community – a lack of tolerance, a lack of treating everybody with the human dignity that is their God-given right.”
Attendees at Sunday's parade included Beth Chayim Chadashim Cantor Juval Porat and Rabbi Heather Miller, who stood alongside a banner reading “World Congress of GLBT Jews,” at the corner of La Cienega and Santa Monica Boulevards. Nearby, a faith-based band played live music.
Across the street, a small anti-gay demonstration was taking place, with a demonstrator carrying a sign that read, “Repent or Perish,” and a man on a microphone telling people at the parade that they deserved to contract sexually transmitted diseases.
According to the Facebook page of the LA PRIDE festival, a moment of silence in honor of the victims of the Florida shooting was held at 10:45 a.m.According to law enforcement officials cited by the Los Angeles Times, a search of the suspect's car turned up several weapons, ammunition and explosive powder was found in the vehicle.
City Controller Ron Galperin, the first openly gay official to be elected to citywide office in Los Angeles, was at the parade Sunday and issued the following statement in response to the shootings: “This morning, the City of Los Angeles grieves for the victims of the horrible act of gun violence committed in Orlando. Our hearts go out to victims of this terrible act of terror and their families as they cope with this senseless tragedy.
“This shooting appears to have been motivated by homophobia. As such, it is a reminder that homophobia is dangerous and can be deadly. Today I will attend the L.A. Pride Parade in West Hollywood. The parade is a chance for the LGBT community to come together in the name of love–love for one another and for ourselves. Today we extend that love to our brothers and sisters in Orlando and march in solidarity with them.”
In an interview with ABC News on Sunday, L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti emphasized how the diversity in Los Angeles “shows the American spirit cannot be beaten down.”
“We are Muslims, Christians and Jews [and] atheists… black, brown, white, Asian, Native American. The same diversity we saw today at LA Pride, the largest in the nation, shows the American spirit cannot be beaten down,” Garcetti said.
Porat, speaking from the by phone with the Journal, said events such as the shooting in Orlando should galvanize the community around LGBT issues.
“Today, LGBT people and their allies, should march prouder and louder and more colorful and just shout out the values upon which I believe society can be healthy and that is love and acceptance and inclusion and, most of all, less focused on fear and less focused on bashing others and judging others and focusing on making the world a better place by changing ourselves. It might sound banal and trite, but this is what it’s about. It’s not easy, we’re trying to model that,” he said.
“And it’s tragic that events like what happened or what we woke up to, that we need those events as a reminder of this,” Porat said. “It’s tragic.”
Porat said he plans to meet with other clergy at BCC, the world’s oldest LGBT synagogue, to plan a memorial service for the victims of the shooting.
“We plan on either having a memorial service either tomorrow or Tuesday, a chance for our members to process and express themselves,” Porat said.
He also noted that the shooting coincided with the celebration of Shavuot, which marks the giving of the Torah.
“It’s not the revelation one desires to wake up to after celebrating Shavuot, so yeah, I guess, it’s an alarming wake-up call to act,” Porat said. “This Pride has very deep meaning after what happened.”
In Jerusalem, an impromptu Facebook event called locals to Zion Square to “send our love and support to the wounded, the dazed and traumatized, the son and daughters of the dead, the LGBT community and all of Orlando.”
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