ORLANDO, Florida –

Omar Mateen, the gunman who perpetrated the deadliest mass shooting in the history of the United States early Sunday morning, has reportedly been exposed as a closeted homosexual. As news has come out, it has been alleged that Mateen killed 50 people at a gay club named Pulse, in Orlando, Florida as a show of rampant homophobia that was compensating for his raging homosexuality.

Mateen had been seen at Pulse many times over recent years, and had even been known to use gay dating apps. Sitora Yusufiy, Mateen’s first wife, who says he was often abusive to her, told the New York Daily News that when they wed in 2009, he told her his life had previously included frequent clubbing.

Yusufiy and her fiance, Marcio Dias, appeared on Brazilian television yesterday and told the channel that “Yusufiy told him Mateen had ‘gay tendencies’ and had been called gay in front of her on several occasions by his father.”

In another interview with one of Mateen’s classmates from 2006, a period when both were enrolled in a Florida police academy, the classmate spoke anonymously with Orlando’s WFTV9, telling the station that Mateen had once asked him out on a date.

“We went to a few gay bars with him,” the classmate said, “and I was not out at the time, so I declined his offer. The classmate told the paper he thought the killer, who pledged allegiance to ISIS before the shooting spree at the nightclub, was “gay and in the closet.”

“Unfortunately, he couldn’t come out. Whether it was because of his family, his faith, or some other reason, I don’t know,” said another classmate. “All I do know is that no one has that much hatred of gay people unless they secretly want to have a dick slapped in or around their mouth. He may have called 911 to publicly confess his allegiance to ISIS, but alone in the dark, there is no doubt in my mind he was pledging his allegiance to dick.”