I don’t have much to say today in the wake of the shooting at the Latter-day Saint congregation in Michigan. It’s incredibly upsetting to have it at all, but to have it happen to members who share my faith, and to have it potentially have happened because of that shared faith (according to early reports) . . .
How do you respond to that?
I’ve already been saying that I feel like we need to be doing more to come together as a country and as a people, and I still believe that. There’s too much hate right now. Too much vilification of people who are different, whether it’s based on race, religion, orientation, politics, or anything else. Events like yesterday’s don’t happen out of nothing. No normal, well-grounded individual wakes up one morning deciding to ram a truck into a church, shoot congregants, and blow the building up. For it to get to that point, there are many failures along the way that have to happen.
The more we normalize seeing people who disagree with us or look or behave differently than we do as being anything other than individuals with their own strengths and weaknesses, the more we’ll see things like yesterday happen.
And I really hope we can all at least agree that events like that need to stop.