Franklin Graham urges ‘God’s Army’ to stop Democrats passing pro-LGBTQ Equality Act
Graham told his followers to vote in Georgia to stop Democrats passing the landmark LGBTQ legislation
Anti-LGBTQ evangelist and Trump ally Franklin Graham has urged his followers to “rally God’s army” to stop Democrats from passing pro-LGBTQ legislation.
Graham took to Facebook to comment on the upcoming Georgia Senate run-off elections on Jan. 5, which could hand control of the Senate to Democrats should they win both seats.
Control of the Senate would allow Democrats and President-Elect Joe Biden to pass the Equality Act, a landmark piece of legislation which would enshrine into federal law nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ people.
The Democratic-controlled House passed the Act last year, but it has stalled in the Republican-controlled Senate. Biden has previously pledged to pass the Equality Act within the first 100 days of his presidency.
The prospect of protecting LGBTQ people from discrimination does not appeal to Graham, who earlier this month complained that the LGBTQ community is pushing a “godless, secular agenda” onto Biden and has previously called gay people “the enemy” of churches.
In his Facebook post, Graham reached out to “Christians who believe the Bible and live in Georgia,” telling them that the “soul of our nation is at stake.”
“I ask you to rally God’s army to PRAY and VOTE in this run-off for the Senate,” he wrote. “Please encourage your family, your friends, your community to pray and to vote. If conservatives lose control of the Senate, there is nothing to stop the radical agenda of the left. There will not be another chance to get this right. The nation is depending on you.”
Graham said the Senate was the “last line of defense to block the radical, wicked agenda that is trying to take control of our nation.”
“These two seats will determine whether liberal socialist-leaning progressives OR conservative lawmakers have a majority,” he continued. “The policies supported by those on the left promise to be openly hostile to those who hold Christian beliefs.
“Liberal, so called progressives, immediately want to pass the Equality Act, which is anything but equal,” Graham wrote. “It is an attempt to rid our country of religious freedom protections. Progressives could pass this easily and quickly with control of the Senate. Friends, this is dangerous. This would change our nation at its very foundation — and yes, it would also greatly change your everyday life. It will vastly alter the America that we leave for our children and grandchildren.”
Earlier this month, Graham said LGBTQ activists “within the Democratic Party are pushing their godless, secular agenda with a potential Biden Administration.”
“If you don’t conform to their ideology, agree with their sinful beliefs, teach what they say is right, they want to close you down,” he wrote on Facebook. “They will pressure and bully politicians to get their way.”
Related: Anti-gay pastor who claimed COVID-19 was judgment on gays dies from virus
Graham said it was “extremely dangerous” if LGBTQ people were “permitted to proceed unchecked,” claiming without evidence that they would “go after the accreditation of Christian colleges, then Christian ministries and churches next, to strip them of tax-exempt status and try to force them to operate under policies that go against biblical teaching.”
“This is not only an attack on free speech and expression, but also an attack on our religious liberty,” he continued.
Graham drew controversy earlier this year after establishing an overflow hospital for COVID-19 patients in New York City that required workers to sign an anti-LGBTQ “statement of faith.” Medical workers were expected to agree to evangelical Christian doctrine, particularly with regard to human sexuality and the fixed, binary nature of gender.
In defending the statement, Graham reiterated his opposition to same-sex marriage and implied that LGBTQ people and those who support same-sex marriage are in the same undesirable category of worker as drunks and drug users.
Graham has previously said he loves homosexuals “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, he blamed historically high rates of gonorrhea, chlamydia, and syphilis in the United States on Hollywood and gay relationships, adding, “God made us male and female and gave sex for us to enjoy inside a marriage relationship between a man and a woman — not two men, not two women. The Bible says that anyone who sins sexually, sins against their own body. How true.”
In 2016, he slammed a monument to the LGBTQ rights movement outside the Stonewall Inn in New York a “monument to sin,” and the year prior complained about a Wells Fargo commercial featuring a same-sex couple, calling it a “tide of moral decay that is being crammed down our throats by big business, the media, and the gay & lesbian community.”
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