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I’ve studied Middle Eastern gender norms professionally for many years, and I’d like to clear something up.

It’s very unlikely that Mateen was a closet homosexual as liberals are alleging. This is not to say that he did not engage in same-sex relations on the side or frequent the Pulse looking for sex.

In the Middle East, a man who always acts as the inserter is classified as straight. He can have same-sex relations with a boy or an effeminate male in addition to his wife without experiencing any of the shame and internal conflict that some people on this thread are imagining. As the penetrator, he does not adopt a gay identity or forfeit his straightness when he has sex with another male.

Western homosexuality is viewed with revulsion in the Middle East, not for the sex act itself, but because gay sex violates the separation of male and female. Gays have sex with gays, alternating positions, thus they are seen as abominations, neither male nor female by Afghan standards.

There is of course some possibility that Mateen had become Westernized enough to be a closet homosexual and the proof would be if he was ever a bottom. But the fact that he was so revolted by witnessing a kiss - a reciprocal, egalitarian gesture - points away from that. In short, that fact that Mateen liked to cruise a gay bar for quick sex is in no way inconsistent with him being primarily motivated by Jihadist sympathies. I would expect ISIS to single out Western gays and uncovered young women as targets because they are viewed as prime examples of Western decadence and evil.