Franklin Graham is joining other Religious Right activists in calling for a boycott of Girl Scout cookies, with the conservative pastor attacking the young women’s organization on his Facebook page today over its stance on LGBT issues. Hailing the Roman Catholic archbishop of St. Louis who penned a letter denouncing the Girl Scouts, Graham similarly took issue with the group’s welcoming stance and said he “won’t be buying any Girl Scout cookies this year.”
So you’re wondering why some have come to consider Evangelical Christianity to be synonymous with bigotry and abject unbridled stupidity? It starts to make sense when you look at the Rev. Franklin Graham, who’s to Christ-like love and acceptance what Torquemada was to free and open expression.
Call me naive if you must, but the remnants of the Sunday School lessons I sat through as a child that still rattle around my brain are mostly about peace, love, tolerance, acceptance- you know, the things the Jesus I don’t believe allegedly taught in the Gospel. His Christianity was about peaceful coexistence and loving one’s fellow human beings without reservation or judgment. This is why when I listen to Graham I find myself with a rising sense of anger. Perhaps Graham went to divinity school someplace that taught only the Old Testament and with it the firm belief that God was an angry, mean-spirited son of a bitch who’d just as soon smite a sinner than forgive them their trespasses. Or perhaps he has some serious unresolved anger management issues he’s yet to acknowledge.
For reasons fully understood only by Graham himself, he appears to be obsessed with homosexuality. He’s gone so far as to hold forth at some considerable length about how Christians must take over every mayor’s office in the country in order to stop the spread of “evil” and “wicked” LGBT non-discrimination policies. Evidently, the idea that all of God’s children should be treated equally and with dignity and respect is too much for a “good” Christian like Graham to stomach.
He’s decided to visit every state in the country this year as part of his “Decision America” tour. He’s encouraging Christians to “live out their faith“…which, to Graham’s way of thinking, means discriminating against the LGBT community and treating them as the second-class subhumans they in his estimation so clearly are.
Right; EXACTLY what Jesus would do, eh?
He doesn’t travel with the speak-nice herd. His sharp-voiced Facebook posts have 3.4 million followers. He’s a popular to-the-punch guest on Christian broadcasting and its kissing cousin, Fox News. He calls Islam a dead religion. He mocks LGBT rights. Raises funds for “persecuted Christians” in the U.S. like bakers who won’t sell cakes to same-sex couples. Boycotts businesses that use happy gay couples in their advertising. Condemns 21st-century secularism as the godless successor to Cold War communism….
While Donald Trump campaigns to “Make America great again,” Franklin Graham, facing a nation where conservative believers are losing cultural clout, wants to make it Christian again. Week after week, he stands on winter-wind-swept statehouse steps and exhorts crowds like a biblical Nehemiah, warning people to repent to rebuild Jerusalem — with a gospel twist. He urges them to pray first and then vote for Bible-believing evangelical candidates.
I might (not inaccurately) be accused of being rather cynical when it comes to issues of religion, but I find it interesting that “Bible-believing evangelical” seems to be code for those who feel they have the imprimatur of the Almighty to hate Gays, Liberals, those who are pro-choice, etc., ad infinitum, ad nauseum, even as they completely ignore the Gospel of Jesus Christ. They claim to revere the teachings of their Lord and Savior, even as they cherry-pick the ones they can twist to support their hatred and disdain for those whose only “crime” is having the temerity to live, love, think, and/or believe differently.
Graham’s made it abundantly clear that his America is a country that prays to (his flavor of) God and follows (his interpretation of) God’s laws. He has no problem with pointedly excluding those who don’t worship his God:
Graham arrived loudly on the U.S. political scene at George W. Bush’s 2001 inauguration when he prayed “in Jesus’ name,” thereby excluding non-Christians at the national civic event. It was distinctly different than Billy Graham’s prayers to “the Lord” at decades of inaugurations and national memorials, said historian of religion Martin Marty.
Franklin Graham is not a warm and fuzzy Christian who believes in tolerance and acceptance. His theology is one that’s shaded in terms of winners and losers- those who are worthy of God’s love and those worthy only of roasting in the pits of Hell. He’s willing, even eager, to take on anyone he perceives as standing in the way of his definition of righteousness. His public boycott of Girl Scout cookies over the group’s commitment to LGBT rights is perhaps the worst and most egregious example of his hateful bastardized Christianity.
Other conservative leaders have, in the past, shared Graham’s contempt for the Girl Scouts, warning that the group turns girls into lesbians and communists.
To refer to Graham as representative of everything wrong with modern Christianity would be something of an understatement, especially when one considers there’s little that’s “modern” (or Christian) about his faith. Instead of following the teachings of his Lord and Savior, to whom he claims to have dedicated his life, Graham has built his empire on the soft sand of bigotry, hatred, and homophobia. He’s a Christian in the same way I’m a Green Bay Packers fan. He gives lip service to his commitment to and love for the teachings of Jesus Christ, even as his words and actions put the lie to that commitment and devotion.
So convinced of his own righteousness is Graham that he doesn’t even bother to attempt to camouflage his hatred and bigotry. “Evangelical” isn’t necessarily code for “self-righteous, hyper-Christian bigot and homophobe”…but it certainly fits in Graham’s case.
“Can you imagine the impact if every community and every city across this great land of ours was run by Christian men and women in that office as mayor,” he asked, “the difference that that would make in our cities, if we had Christian mayors?”
“[I]f we had Christian mayors?” Never mind that the separation of Church and State is still one of the most basic and important Constitutional concepts. Never mind that people like Franklin Graham are EXACTLY why that separation is, has been, and will remain vital to the continuation and survival of American greatness. No one should have the right to force their narrow ideological/moral/theological agenda on others. American governance works because religion is barred from exercising dominion over it. Allow that firewall to be breached, and it won’t be long before the America we know ceases to exist, to be replaced by an oppressive theocracy.
To Graham’s way of thinking, it’s not “tyranny” if you’re the one doing the oppressing. It’s only when you’re being oppressed that the problems begin.
Graham brought up Charlotte, North Carolina, where he claimed that “90 percent of Christians” failed to vote, allowing a candidate who is supportive of LGBT rights to be elected. Charlotte’s city council rejected an LGBT nondiscrimination measure last year after opponents fixated on transgender people using the bathroom of their choice, a new flashpoint of anti-LGBT activists.
The idea of people being fixated on who can use which bathroom should be offensive to anyone who values privacy and dignity. Christians (or those who claim that crown) have no business holding sway over the use of bathrooms. That Graham is unable to recognize the patently offensive and invasive nature of his hypocrisy seems not to matter at all to him.
“And we got a woman and her goal is the gay-lesbian agenda,” Graham said, “trying to get transgenders into the bathrooms so that if a person wakes up in the morning and they feel like they’re a woman that’s a man and he wants to go into a ladies’ restroom then they can do that. And that’s her goal. And I can tell you right now that that’s wicked and that’s evil. Men belong in men’s bathrooms and women belong in women’s bathrooms and we don’t need men and predators going into women’s bathrooms, I’m just telling you.”
The “gay-lesbian agenda?” You mean the one which stipulates that all humans are deserving of equal treatment and worthy of being afforded a basic level of dignity and respect? The one that doesn’t distinguish between and divide people based on the choice of lifestyle and whom and/or how they love? The one that recognizes and cherishes love in all its forms, something that Graham’s “Christianity” won’t allow him to do?
A reasonable person might find themselves wondering why Graham is so intently fixated on homosexuality. Why does the idea of equal rights for the LGBT community terrify him so? What is it about the idea of transgender people using bathrooms corresponding to the gender they identify as that provokes such pronounced paroxysms of righteous fury in him? What is Franklin Graham so afraid of?
Those are, of course, questions only Graham can answer…but it appears he’d much rather focus his considerable outrage and self-righteous butthurt outward. From my experience, we tend to hate what we most fear in ourselves. I’m not about to hold forth about (nor am I particularly interested in) Graham’s sexuality…but the virulence of his intolerance does raise some valid questions.
Jesus never taught that it was acceptable to discriminate against those who happen to be different, nor did he provide authorization for treating one’s fears and prejudices as being divinely inspired. Franklin Graham may see things differently, but he’s as much a Christian as George W. Bush was a Rhodes Scholar…and he’s a living, breathing example of everything wrong with modern religion. He’s a bigot, a charlatan, and a world-class hypocrite who makes me proud to say I consider myself to be good without God.
