Franklin Graham’s deceptive defense of bigotry

It turns out Franklin Graham isn’t anti-LGBTQ after all. That’s what he said, at least, in the face of someone standing up to his Bible bullying in a big way last week.

The North Carolina icon and son of Billy Graham was disinvited Sunday from appearing in a Liverpool, England, arena on his upcoming summer tour of the United Kingdom. Liverpool mayor Joe Anderson said Graham was unwelcome because of his opposition to gay rights. “We can not allow hatred and intolerance to go unchallenged by anyone,” he said in a tweet. A second UK venue announced Wednesday that it too was canceling a Graham booking.

In a response on Facebook, Graham said it’s all a big misunderstanding. He’s not coming to the UK to speak against anyone in particular. He’s against all sin — and that includes his own. “My message to all people is that they can be forgiven and they can have a right relationship with God,” he wrote.

Our Bibles say that Graham is right about all of us being sinners. But there’s a Sinai-sized hole in his suggestion that he’s an equal-opportunity sin-hater. Graham might say he’s “coming to speak for everybody” in the UK, but he has history of spending an awful lot of time talking about one community in particular. We know this because we counted.

In the last six months alone, Graham has singled out the LGBTQ community in at least 19 Facebook posts. He’s railed against the “LGBT agenda,” mocked gender identity, and frequently reminded folks that marriage should be between a man and a woman only. That’s far more time than he spent on sins like pride and lust — or the bigger ones like stealing or bearing false witness or coveting thy neighbor’s wife. The only transgression that gave the LGBTQ community a run for its money in being singled out as a sin was abortion, which fell a few posts short.

Contrast all those LGBTQ mentions with the number of times Jesus talks about homosexuality in the Bible. That would be zero.

In fact, some scholars say the Bible isn’t as certain about gays as some think. Those scholars caution against selective literalism — holding up the passage condemning homosexuality yet ignoring the one that says it’s shameful for a woman to speak at church. At the least, the Bible spends a greater portion of its words on other transgressions than does Graham, who to our recollection hasn’t called for multiple boycotts of companies and organizations for, say, the sin of greed.

Plus, it’s a waste of the powerful platform that Graham has. His other Facebook posts often reflect that promise. They’re filled with hope and affirmation and the good and important work done by his organization, Samaritan’s Purse.

Thankfully, Graham’s selective pulpit pounding on homosexuality has become a relic as Americans have largely moved the opposite direction, and Graham’s status as a spokesman for Christians has been diluted by his laughable insistence to look the other way at Donald Trump’s immorality.

So why do his Facebook posts matter? Because the LGBT community is seeing a regression under this president and in state legislatures that again are trying to use faith as a justification for discrimination. Graham’s outsized obsession with the LGBTQ community is a reminder of the danger that its members still face. Like the UK, we need to be vigilant in standing up to it.

This story was originally published January 30, 2020 at 9:08 AM with the headline "Franklin Graham’s deceptive defense of bigotry."