Megan, you're spot on. People are individuals first and foremost. As the thread title says, brothers, sons, fathers. (and the female equivalents of course) and not a faceless group. It's as you say so much easier for vicious people to feel hatred or contempt for 'blacks', 'gays' 'immigrants' etc than to be evil to one's next-door-neighbour or to wish death upon a work colleague.

I'm afraid my Muslim husband was terribly homophobic when he first arrived in UK. He tells me that in his country of birth, no gay would ever dare to 'come out' as he would be immediately beaten to death by the locals, with sticks, bricks etc, then doused in petrol and set alight. Horrifying. He has gradually come to accept gay people, mainly because he has a gay colleague at work who has been very kind to him. And a gay shop assistant who helped him choose a perfume for his mum in Africa, then proceeded to find lots of free samples to add to the gift.

Only yesterday we saw a couple of gay women walking affectionately hand in hand in the shopping mall, it was so sweet. I was really pleased to hear my husband say with a smile, "I think they must love each other!" In the past he'd have been utterly disgusted.
It's been an uphill struggle though to get him to this point.

I'm thinking of the bereaved families in Orlando this morning, and hoping those seriously wounded in hospital pull through. What an atrocity.