While I do not consider love between any two people a sin, nor do I believe that God intervenes for or against nations or individuals, I challenge anyone fearful of God’s wrath to ask whether LGBT issues are really God’s top concern.
What about America’s consumption of natural resources at rates far exceeding other developed and industrialized nations? The expanding environmental impact of human activity decimates other species and the balance of nature, which are God’s creations.
What about America’s ongoing foreign wars, which may have killed a million people in Iraq and Afghanistan, wounded an estimated 5 million and displaced millions more (killing 6,000 Americans and wounding some 50,000 more)? Few people still believe that these trillion-dollar wars were the right response following the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Surgical actions would have been more effective, less offensive, far less expensive and far less lethal.
What about America’s expanding wealthy class, while poverty grows and our middle class shrinks? In the 1950s and ’60s, America had the healthiest middle class in the world, and one wage-earner could support a family. Since then, the numbers of American billionaires has grown from fewer than 20 to more than 400. These changes are the result of national policies. But are the policies and the results pleasing to God?
Perhaps the mind and concerns of God are larger than Steve and Sally Kern can imagine. I’m just asking.
—Nathaniel Batchelder Oklahoma City
