Murders of two gay men in Sligo

What strikes me from looking at the photos released of the two victims are that they look to be two gentle souls.

Its likely the killer spotted that too while browsing online.

It's hard to comprehend what goes through these sadists minds, but it has nothing to do with their religion that's for sure.

If you look at countries which criminalise being gay, they have something in common which generally comes down to the predominant religion in those countries which influences such laws. I'm not sure how you can say the perpetrator's attacks have "nothing" to do with their religion in this context.

I appreciate where you're going with this, and implying that there could be a personal element to the murders, or it's more a case that their being gay was incidental. And while that's a possibility, the nature of their deaths (which I'm not going into here, it'll come out in time) says that there's a 99% chance they were murdered for being gay.

Indeed, both awful murders and shocking for two nieces to discover their uncle in such a condition.

But, indeed, we struggle with stating facts. It makes the problem worse when you find the Irish media saying things like "The Sligo Champion has reported that the man, who grew up in Sligo and attended school there" with a Father Ted awkwardness over the apparent fact that the person isn't a Sligo native.

There's a better way of facing realities.

But there is nuance here. Targeting certain people to kill based off hatred towards certain aspects/traits/markers of these people is different than a more general run of the mill murder..

not saying that these two murders fit the above description. Will wait to hear more.

"isn't a Sligo native"

It's interesting the clamour to try and prove that this person is not Irish. If someone grew up in Sligo, went to school in Sligo as a child, then they are fundamentally no different to a "native".

Otherwise you're implying that there is something in their "non-native" nature which has made the difference here. Which is....you know.

The Irish media are being careful to dispel any rumours that this has been an imported problem. That they arrived in on a boat and started killing people.

If the perp grew up in Ireland, then he's a 100% home-grown problem.

Jesus, the semantic gymnastics some people will engage in to try and convince themselves this doesn't qualify as a hate crime...

Need to dumb this down:

Jonny murdering Mary because she’s Muslim, or gay and Jonny hates Muslims or gays is a hate crime (murder)

Johnny murdering Mary because she cut across him in traffic is not a hate crime murder, or murdering his wife to pocket life assurance is not a hate crime!

hate crimes have specific meaning.

Wrong attitude with a weird undercurrent of "it was they're own fault"

hookup culture is a thing in society. There's no rowing back on it. What should be out there is taking the proper precautions to lessen the risk as much as possible. That's proactive.

Cannot say this. You will be accused of victim blaming!

Generally yes you'd be right but that's not strictly true. There are examples of migrant communities that have insular cultures that are nearly entirely separate from their host nation. I can think of a few examples:

The orthodox Jewish community of Williamsburg New York have been in situ for at least 4 generations. Have their own language, don't allow their members to have Internet or TV access unless they are 'elders' women are forced to marry as teens and banned from education. All married women have to shave their heads. Many cannot speak English at all and most certainly do not call themselves 'Americans'. This is an extreme example sure but look at the Pakistani community of the UK that effectively operates under its own laws. Migrant communities in Ireland are probably too small to achieve these levels of separation from mainstream but it is possible.