“If you want to continue living like this, it’s the flames of hell for you,” evangelical pastor Franklin Graham has said. But in an interview with Fox News host Laura Ingraham, he swears he’s not homophobic.
Franklin Graham is doing some public relations work for his Samaritan’s Purse conservative Christian non-profit after the organization was met with great concern and warnings for requiring its medical professionals and even its volunteers working at its Central Park coronavirus field hospital in New York City to sign a document agreeing to support Graham’s anti-LGBTQ beliefs.
After Fox News host Laura Ingraham, who has an ugly history of anti-LGBTQ and white nationalist remarks, announced on-air Wednesday that she was sending Samaritan’s Purse a “significant” donation, she asked Graham why the left is concerned about his anti-LGBTQ policies.
“We have a statement of faith, Laura,” Graham said, as Media Matters reports (video below).
“We believe that marriage is between a man and a woman. And that’s — that goes back to the beginning of time to the first man and woman that God created,” Graham claimed. “And this is our standard, and so for people that we hire — we are a Christian organization. We are a religious organization, so we want to hire people of like mind, and we have a statement of faith that we require our employees to sign. And in that is ‘a marriage is between a man and a woman,’ and this is very offensive to some people and the gay community.”
It’s also very offensive to the majority of Americans. Last year Gallup found nearly three out of four Americans (73 percent) believe same-sex relationship should be legal, and more than six in 10 (63 percent) believe marriages of same-sex couples should be legal.
“And listen,” Graham continued. “I’m not homophobic, and I’m certainly not going around bashing people because they may be homosexual.”
Graham literally is going around bashing people because they are gay.
“I believe in that God loves all of us. He created us all, but we also are sinners, and our sins separate us from God. And I want people to know how they can have a relationship with God, and that’s through faith in his son Jesus Christ. So, I don’t bash homosexuals. I want homosexuals to know the truth, that God does love them.”
Graham also wants gay people to know “the truth of the Gospel,” he has said, but as he preaches it.
“I’m not afraid of homosexuals, I’m really not — matter of fact, I love them,” Graham has said. “I love them enough to care to warn them that if they want to continue living like this, it’s the flames of hell for you.”
Last year Graham infamously warned Pete Buttigieg he will suffer “eternal damnation” if he does not “repent” his homosexuality.
“God’s Word defines homosexuality as sin,” Graham added, criticizing the former Indiana mayor for kissing his husband in public. It’s “something to be repentant of, not something to be flaunted, praised, or politicized.”
Graham’s use of the Bible as a weapon is very selective, as NCRM reported last year.
In 2018 he claimed now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s alleged attempted rape was just something “he did as a teenager” – apparently no repentance required – unlike being gay, according to Graham.
He has also called an alleged child abuser (the details are horrific and sickening) a “great patriot.” Apparently no repentance required there, either.
And Graham has defended Trump’s affair with porn actress Stormy Daniels as “nobody’s business” — although he insisted in 1998 that Bill Clinton’s “sins are not private.”
Watch Graham and Ingraham on Fox News via Media Matters:
Written by David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement. Image via NCRM
