Ex-officer charged with murder

This was a horrendous crime that truly touched my community. I of course have my own opinions on the guilt or innocence of the accused. However my opinions are not what is important in this case. The damage is done, an innocent life has been taken, and an officer’s career is over.

The pain will linger on both for the family of the victim and his extended gay and lesbian family. This type of crime can do more damage and have reverberations for a long time to come. My concern now is how this horrible crime will place an unfavorable light on the gay and lesbian communities. Since this story broke, I’ve heard comments like “you know he only killed him because he didn’t want his wife to find out he was gay.” Or he probably did it so his buddies on the police force wouldn’t find out.” IF Mr. Rio’s is in fact found guilty, these types of statements may very well be true. However they are questions only he can answer and we may never know the truth about why he did what he did.

Suffice it to say those types of statements do serve an important purpose of reminding us how far we as a society have to go when in comes to accepting gays and lesbians into the community. You see, for us staying inside a dark closet and hiding or denying who we are can be dangerous and very self destructive. It eventually consumes us entirely and ends up hurting or harming everyone and everything around us. We can only speculate that perhaps, if this officer had not felt ashamed of whom he was, he would not have felt the need to hide this side of himself and this terrible tragedy may have never had to happen.