Franklin Graham Ends Pride Month with Homophobic Message
How about a little hate to end Pride Month?
That is the way homophobic evangelist Franklin Graham chose to end June with a Facebook post commenting on a BBC story of how "Pride has gone mainstream."
He begins his rant describing Pride as "an entire month set aside to celebrate a lifestyle that God defines as sin," comparing it to celebrating "lying, adultery, or murder (which includes abortion), or anything else that God says is sin."
But he also gave the LGBTQ community another hit when he accused them of the sin of pridefulness. "The Bible also tells us that God hates pride. Shame on the nation that celebrates and glorifies sin. All of us are guilty of sin, which means breaking God's standards."
When Graham's father, evangelist Billy Graham died in 2018, he was hailed by ex-President George Bush as "America's preacher." "(Billy) Graham's accomplishments are, without doubt, legion. The widely cited estimate that he preached to some 215 million people is likely in the ballpark," wrote Politico at the time of his death in 2018.
Graham faced criticism last year when he set up a COVID-19 care center in New York City and demanded that volunteers agree that "marriage is exclusively the union of one genetic male and one genetic female" in a Statement of Faith, The Charlotte Observer.
"When asked about the Statement of Faith, Samaritan's Purse (the non-profit behind the COVID-19 center) said in a statement:
'We are a Christian organization and we hire Christians who share our statement of faith. We have a common denominator of our faith in Jesus Christ and sharing that hope,'" added the Charlotte Observer.
He has also over the past year campaigned against Pride flags being flown at embassies; asked followers to lobby against the Equality Act; and during the 2020 Presidential election campaign claimed that Biden would push the "Gay Agenda."
"But almost two decades ago, Graham handed over the keys of the empire to his son, Franklin," Politico continued. "And if you want to chart the troubled recent course of American evangelicalism — its powerful rise after World War II and its surprisingly quick demise in recent years — you need look no further than this father-and-son duo of Billy and Franklin Graham. The father was a powerful evangelist who turned evangelicalism into the dominant spiritual impulse in modern America. His son is — not to put too fine a point on it — a political hack, one who is rapidly rebranding evangelicalism as a belief system marked not by faith, hope, and love but by fear of Muslims and homophobia."
Newsweek reported last July that Graham has been one of the biggest — if not the biggest — social media advocates for ex-President Donald Trump. In a survey from January through May 2021, the magazine "analyzed the Twitter and Facebook data of the 20 most-followed accounts in TrumpWorld — that is, those who are highly supportive of Trump, often uncritically so, or who have paid fealty to him to save or boost their careers."
Graham, Newsweek concludes, "an evangelical rather than a politician or a Trump, who emerges atop the ranking as not only one of the most-followed figures in TrumpWorld but also the account that drives the highest engagement."