about-face #3
アメリカのオーランドのナイトクラブで起こった銃撃事件で容疑者を含む５０人の方が亡くなりました。
Inside an Orlando gay bar, the night after the shooting
The drag queen stood before the crowd at a gay bar in Orlando on Sunday night -- less than 24 hours after 50 people were shot and killed at a similar bar only a few miles away -- without her dress, heels or wig.
"I don't really know what to say," Darcel Stevens, the 55-year-old performer in a T-shirt, told the crowd of mostly gay men. Many of them held candles in their hands and memories of murdered friends in their hearts. Disco lights drifted across the somber scene. "I'm angry. I'm sad. I'm lost. I'm confused. I just want to lay in the bed and just put the covers over my head..."
"It could have been any of us. Any of us," Stevens said. "Why not us? Why are we here?"
Questions like those were on the lips of many who gathered on Sunday night at Parliament House, a gay hotel, bar and club near downtown Orlando.
Add to the list: How do we best support each other? What do we do for the families? Is it safe to be here -- in a bar like the one attacked? And what happens to the progress we've made?
This is a community reeling from tragedy, grasping to understand how someone with an assault rifle could kill 49 people and wound 53 more at Pulse, a club that many of these same folks frequent, when it had seemed like so much was going right for LGBT people. American attitudes about lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people have done an about-face in recent years. The Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage nationwide just one year ago this month.
It seemed like there was so much progress.
And now this.
Senseless violence.
"We've got some difficult days ahead, y'all. I'm not gonna lie to ya," Stevens told those who had gathered in front of the stage at 7 p.m., and had done so in defiance of some local leaders who urged them to stay home for safety reasons.
"And if we don't stand together as a community we won't see our way out of this."
http://edition.cnn.com/2016/06/13/opinions/sutter-orlando-shooting-vigil/index.html
今回取り上げるのはabout-faceです。『ジーニアス英和辞典』（第五版、大修館書店）を見ると、ここでのaboutは前置詞の「〜について」ではなく、副詞の「ぐるりと回って、転回して；向きを変えて、反対の方向に」の意味で使われていることが分かりました。
そしてabout-faceで「回れ右；（主義・主観などの）１８０度の転換」とありました。
LDOCEでも“a complete change in the way someone thinks or behaves”と定義されています。
近年では、同性愛者の理解を求める運動が活発になり、人々の対応が変わってきたことがわかります。
今回の事件ではISが犯行声明をあげていることもあり、オバマ大統領は「まだ捜査の初期段階だが、これはテロ行為であり、憎しみの行為であるということは間違いない」と発言しています。(flyingbird)
