 |
| Franklin Graham |
Trump will have several ministers on his podium during his inauguration and wouldn't you know it? They all seem to be "hot messes." Particularly when it comes to the lgbt community.
From
Right Wing Watch, this is just two of them:
Franklin Graham
Franklin Graham, son of the iconic evangelist Billy Graham, is a more
intensely anti-gay right-wing version of his father, and reflects the
continuing spiral of America’s right wing into anti-Muslim conspiracy-theory paranoia.
Like Trump, Graham is a fan of Russian strongman Vladimir Putin, praising Putin’s anti-gay policies and defending his support for the Assad regime in Syria. Graham went to Russia
in 2015, where he praised Putin while criticizing secularism in
America. While in Russia, Graham told a reporter that President Obama
was “leading America down the wrong road” and “taking a stand against God.” Graham also planned to host a conference in Moscow with the Russian Orthodox Church to address anti-Christian persecution, but had to cancel after Putin outlawed evangelism from Christians who aren’t members of the Orthodox church. Although Graham maintained that he was not formally endorsing a presidential candidate in 2016, he held rallies around the country
during which he made it clear what he thought Christians’ duty was at
the ballot box. Graham, who has said the advance of legal equality for
LGBT people is a sign of the coming End Times and invites the judgment of God, repeatedly said that 2016 was the last chance for Christians to save America from godless secularists and the “very wicked” LGBT agenda being promoted by the Obama administration.
Graham was among the Religious Right leaders who spoke up for Trump
when the tape of him bragging about sexually assaulting women was
released, decrying “the godless progressive agenda of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton”
and saying the Supreme Court was the most important issue for
Christians when voting. When Trump called for “a total and complete
shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s
representatives can figure out what is going on,” Graham defended him and said he’d been making the same argument “for some time.”
And of course
Timothy Dolan:
New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan criticized Trump’s nativist rhetoric in 2015, but more recently has praised Trump’s positions on abortion
and “religious liberty” and has said since the election he looks
forward to the appointment of Supreme Court justices “who will reform
the injustice and travesty of Roe v. Wade.”
Dolan hosted the meetings at which the 2009 Manhattan Declaration
was created, and he was among its original signers. The declaration is a
manifesto for Christian conservatives who declare that when it comes to
opposition to abortion and marriage equality, “no power on earth, be it
cultural or political, will intimidate us into silence or
acquiescence.” Regarding marriage specifically it says, “No one has a
civil right to have a non-marital relationship treated as a marriage.”
And it vows civil disobedience, saying:
Because we honor justice and the common good, we will not comply with
any edict that purports to compel our institutions to participate in
abortions, embryo-destructive research, assisted suicide and euthanasia,
or any other anti-life act; nor will we bend to any rule purporting to
force us to bless immoral sexual partnerships, treat them as marriages
or the equivalent, or refrain from proclaiming the truth, as we know it,
about morality and immorality and marriage and the family. We will
fully and ungrudgingly render to Caesar what is Caesar’s. But under no
circumstances will we render to Caesar what is God’s.
Someone probably needs to anoint that podium with holy water before AND after the inaugural ceremony.
