Opinion

Thoughts, Prayers, and the Moral Failure of Those Who Worship Hate

On September 28, 2025, a gunman, later identified as former Marine Thomas Jacob Sanford, rammed his pickup into the Grand Blanc, Michigan, chapel of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, opened fire on worshippers, and set the building ablaze. Four people were killed and eight were injured. Responding police fatally shot the attacker. Investigators are probing whether he targeted the congregation out of anti-Mormon hatred.

By Kris Kleindeinst, Guest Columnist

My thoughts and prayers go out to the people who have lost someone to gun violence whom they revered for his ability to weaponize poorly understood passages from scripture, civil rights, human rights, U.S. history–someone who was at best a bully and at worst a gaslighting provocateur—knowing they will not learn anything at all about how the targets of this man’s bigoted views supporting gun violence as the answer to living on a planet where everyone does not look like you, are almost ALWAYS nonwhite, nonstraight, humans, and that was never the problem.

They will not see the light of compassion. But thoughts and prayers that they do.

Thoughts and prayers that these traitors to democracy, the flag, and the true meaning of the Christian faith will see the error of their extremist ways. Did they forget Jesus’s admonition that if you live by the sword you will die by the sword? Not a Christian but even I know that one.

Also, this was a murder, not an assassination. Minnesota state representative Melissa Hortman and her husband were assassinated in June, and a state representative, John Hoffman, were injured in an attempted assassination.

Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi was the target of an assassination attempt that seriously injured her husband.

Temples and Mosques have been targets of gun violence and people have died. High schools. Grade Schools. Judges.

None of these events were properly acknowledged by the pretender in chief.

None of these were targeted by the mythical “radical left lunatics”.

The shooter in the Utah incident was raised in an extremely right-wing, radically right Christian, gun-celebrating family. Not a left-wing radical lunatic.

I don’t know why the media persists in calling these people conservative. They are not. They are extremists, traitors, and in some cases, terrorists. They have followed the pretender to the throne and his newly deceased attack dog blindly because he is willing to use racism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, and misogyny to whip up a frenzied base to do his extremely traitorous bidding. It helps them justify their moral laziness and ignore the true causes of their suffering: their own president and his lapdogs in congress, plus a whole slew of uber wealthy folks who took all their money, health care, jobs.

Killing someone is never the solution to anything.

My thoughts and prayers also go out to the rest of us who will have to continue to live in fear of these self-righteous, terribly deceived individuals, especially now that the pretender in chief is using this as his excuse to escalate his war on his own country.

Still, we rise.

Kris Kleindeinst is a writer, a bookseller, a social justice advocate; owner of Left Bank Books, Lambda-winning editor, community organizer, and memoirist in progress based in St. Louis, Mo.