Appalled at letter about sinners | Letter

Published 11:00 am Monday, June 27, 2016

I am totally appalled that you allowed the letter ‘We are all sinners, pray for our nation’ to be printed in the newspaper last week. First of all it seemed like it was a written as a free piece of advertising for Franklin Graham – surely he should have to pay for advertising like anyone else.

That is not the main reason that I was so shocked to read the letter though. It started off by talking about the tragic and senseless deaths and injuries of so many LGBT people and allies in the shooting in Orlando. As a married gay man I was still reeling from that attack, not only because of its dead toll, but because it appeared to be a blatant attack on a minority group within this country. Not once did the letter say anything about how tragic those deaths were, no prayers were said for the friends and families of those influenced. It was an attack against a minority group that a lot of religious people, including Franklin Graham, do not think even should be allowed to exist or go about their daily lives without being judged. Here is a direct quote that I pulled from an article about Franklin:

“There is also sin involving the misuse of sex. God created sex and gave it to us to enjoy, but tells us in His Holy Word that it is to be reserved for a marriage relationship between a man and a woman. Any kind of sexual activity or sexual relationship outside of that is sin,” Graham wrote in a long message on his Facebook page on Tuesday.

As a publication that covered the marriage equality fight and the subsequent ruling for marriage equality, including actually interviewing both me and my husband, I am both shocked and saddened that this has been printed and I would only hope that The Kirkland Reporter finds a way to make amends to the LGBT community.

Shaun Kelly, Kirkland