Is Franklin Graham now using his ministry to endorse political candidates?

Franklin Graham seems to be using his ministry to endorse political candidates.

Former Trump White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders made the news recently by announcing that she may be eyeing the governorship of Arkansas.

And she has already got one high-profile person in her corner:

There's talk about @SarahHuckabee running for gov. She told @NYTimes there’s a difference in someone who wants to be a senator or governor & someone called to serve. We need more people like her who are called by God to serve in positions of leadership. https://t.co/ogeEreWua1

— Franklin Graham (@Franklin_Graham) November 30, 2019

Trump supporting evangelical leader reportedly felt that AIDS was 'God's punishment'

When Gary Bauer worked in the Reagan Administration, he allegedly undermined the fight against HIV/AIDS because he felt that it was God's punishment.

Editor's Note - On World AIDS Day as we commemorate the lives lost because of HIV/AIDS and those who continue to live with the condition, we should also remember those with power back then who either stood by and did nothing or actually applauded how the disease attacked our community. Gary Bauer who, as far as I know, has never had to answer for his behavior in the Reagan Administration as HIV/AIDS spread in our community. He remains to this day looked upon as a pro-family evangelical leader as he prominently supports the actions of Donald Trump. Trump even appointed him on the US Commission on International Religious Freedom.

The following is a repost from 2014:

The late President Reagan gets a lot of deserved flack for his negligence in the early days of the AIDS crisis. Today, we learned that there needs to be some flack dispensed around because Reagan isn't the only person in his Administration who needs to be called to the carpet.

According to Right Wing Watch:

Anyone who is familiar with Gary Bauer's anti-gay extremism will not be surprised to learn that his bigotry goes way back. Just in time for World AIDS Day, we now know that when Bauer was working in the Reagan White House, he fought hard to keep gay people off the nation’s first AIDS commission.

Right Wing Watch published part of a memo he sent to Reagan regarding this:

 3. Millions of Americans try to raise their children to believe that homosexuality is immoral. In many states homosexual practices are illegal, including sodomy. For you to appoint a known homosexual to a Presidential Commission will give homosexuality a stamp of acceptability. It will drive a wedge between us and many of our socially conservative supporters. 

4. While it is true that homosexuals have been major victims of AIDS, they are also responsible for its spread. Recent students show the average gay man with AIDS has had over 150 different sexual partners in the previous 12 months. 

Bauer proposed instead appointing a relative of someone with AIDS, or a caregiver, or as a last resort, a “reformed” homosexual: “that is, someone not currently living a gay life style. We have identified several individuals that meet that criteria.”

 In the end, Reagan ignored Bauer’s pleadings and appointed Frank Lilly, an openly gay geneticist, to the Presidential Commission on the HIV Epidemic.

'Homophobic pundit disappears from Trump campaign website after outcry' & other Wed midday news briefs

Trump doesn't seem to be eager to be seen with Clarence Mason Weaver at the present.

Misogynistic and anti-LGBTQ pundit disappears from Trump campaign website following criticism - Making noise instead of being blase tends to work. Of course that doesn't mean he's completely gone, but it does mean a reaction was caused.

Black LGBTQ activists split over Harris, Buttigieg spat - I'm quoted in this and I meant every damn word I said. 

Norterra Canyon Principal Quashed Student Project on LGBTQ Pride - Excuse me? Why?

Anti-LGBTQ activist doesn't think the LGBTQ community should celebrate Thanksgiving

Linda Harvey

How coldhearted and homophobic do you have to be to not want the LGBTQ community to even enjoy Thanksgiving? Let's ask perennially obsessed anti-LGBTQ activist, the once labeled 'most homophobic woman in America,'  Linda Harvey. Apparently she thinks our community shouldn't celebrate Thanksgiving:

The internet is replete with homosexual/transgender hostility toward parents, those who lovingly provided a home, allowance, support, and often college tuition, not to mention the child’s genetic heritage — and receive derision and scorn in return from sexually sinful or gender-deviant children. The tears of these parents could fill a cathedral. God knows their pain. 

 Our current culture applauds the person who “comes out” of the closet, no matter what betrayals result from the pursuit of sinful desires. Recently, I was deeply grieved when a young minister we knew as he grew up declared his homosexual preference very publicly. But it was also stunning to watch those who claim identity as believers gush with applause for his “courage.” This is not courage, but rebellion, indulgence, and pride. Those who embrace homosexual sin or gender rebellion are declaring that God never created them — they create themselves.

Can you imagine how much of a drag it would be at Linda Harvey's house at Thanksgiving.

You would probably have a meal of unseasoned, dry-as-the-dust turkey with bland watery cranberry sauce and macaroni and cheese with raisins. For desert, you wouldn't have any because desert is so sweet that it has to be made by Satan.

Then after washing it down with a glass of lukewarm water, you would settle down for a  watching of some awful z-grade right-wing Christian propaganda movie starring Kirk Cameron and Kevin Sorbo  about some child who dreamed of going to Heaven after being coerced into a low-grade abortion by her evil gay friend plotting to convert her boyfriend into homosexuality while his father, the even more evil Democratic Congressman, plots with the forces of socialism to put the little old Christian lady in jail among drooling lesbians because she refuses to sell flowers for the wedding of the very very evil gay couple who is plotting to adopt two children so they can indoctrinate them to be transgender and set them loose in the area public school so they can "force" it to allow transgender students to use showers and bathrooms of their true gender expression so that the girls would be targeted by predators who will in turn sexually assault them, which will lead one girl's father to come out of retirement and embrace his former occupation as an assassin, where he will be brainwashed into attempting to take Trump out at his next campaign rally.

Or something like that.

Needless to say that some of the comments below Harvey's piece aren't exactly positive towards her point of view. I particularly like the following one so much, I think I will end this post with it:

Respect is a two way street, Linda. This homosexual will be bringing a cheesecake to Thanksgiving dinner celebrated together with my wonderfully accepting father, brothers, sister, sister-in-law, nieces and nephews. The fact that you simply can't imagine people having that in their life is a sad commentary on your own state of mind.

'At Least 22 Transgender People Were Killed In 2019. Here Are Their Stories.' & other Tue midday news briefs

Our fallen sisters

On Transgender Day of Remembrance, we honor the 22 transgender and gender non-conforming people killed so far this year. - So sad. I didn't see this until after Transgender Day of Remembrance. Still, it deserves a larger shout out.

Fox guest Chadwick Moore falsely suggests issues facing trans women of color are manufactured problems - Chadwick Moore is a bottom feeding gay man who is only interested in his sad career, even if he has to tear down his own community for it.

Golden Globes: What a rise in LGBTQ content may mean for awards acclaim - Positive visibility never hurts.

Federal Workers Are “Afraid” After Trump’s Anti-LGBTQ Crusade At The Supreme Court -And I'm pissed that the media hasn't pressed the issue harder.

Poor Roy Moore. Gay men are living rent free (and having sex) in his head

Roy Moore

Removed judge and failed Senate candidate Roy Moore wants to run for the Senate again but can't seem to shake his obsession with gay men. Or specifically how he thinks they are having sex.

From Right-Wing Watch:

Moore spoke recently to the Huntsville Republican Men’s Group, according to the Alabama Political Reporter: “We have got to go back to what we did back in the sixties and seventies back to a moral basis,” Moore said. “We did not have a national healthcare system. You know when Obama passed this thing rising all our costs and business started going down the tube everybody said it was going to be repealed. You never hear anybody in Congress talk about it now. Our indebtedness was $22 trillion. Back in the sixties and seventies it was much lower. It was a sixth of that. Abortion was not legal when I went to Vietnam. It was passed later. It was OK’d later. We had abortion laws in our country and our state. We did not have same sex marriage. We did not have transgender rights. Sodomy was illegal. These things were just not around when my classmates and I went to West Point and Vietnam.”

Moore is not only sadly deluded, but also naive. He claims that sodomy wasn't around when he attended West Point. West Point was all-male when Moore attended.  I am almost certain that sodomy had a nice little corner room at the back of the campus, where it had a number of visitors.

I'm not trying to be disrespectful. I'm simply being real.

But wait. Moore continued to reminisce:

“We have drag queens teaching kindergarten children in this state and this community….in Huntsville in Mobile they taught kids and they dress them up in drag,” Moore told the audience. “Where does this come from? Gender identity is being taught in California to young kids and parents have no choice but to let their kids be taught that.”

It's always entertaining when bigots and homophobes weep for bygone ages in which their mindsets of ignorance ruled the day. It's a wonderful reminder of the battles we have won.

'How Trump is trying to reverse LGBTQ progress in plain sight' & other Mon midday news briefs

Under Trump, LGBTQ Progress Is Being Reversed in Plain Sight - People should read this and take it into account.

In His Bid for Congress, This Gay Doctor Believes D.C. Needs More Medical Professionals Elected - And I agree with him. 

Chicago Area’s largest high school district votes to allow trans students facility access - This is wonderful! 

First transgender Rhodes scholar named in diverse 2020 class - Congratulations Hera!