Inconvenient and Ugly Truths about Billy Graham

Some say that it is bad form to speak ill of the dead.  I view it as even worse form, however, to rewrite history and avoid the truth about public figures, especially when the truth involves bigotry and self-enrichment.  While much of the mainstream media is engaged something akin to self-felatio in mourning over the death of Billy Graham - I omit the designation "Reverend" since I hold bible colleges and the Southern Baptist Convention in very low esteem - very little is being said about the ugly side of Graham who was a homophobe, a make chauvinist, and an anti-Semite.  Yes, unlike most Southern Baptists of his era, Graham disavowed outright segregation, but that hardly merits forgiving his other transgressions  against decency.    It also bears remembering that Graham set the model for today's self-enriching scamvangelists - i.e., so called pastors and evangelists who laugh all the way to the bank - and played a role in evangelical Christians' toxic role in American politics.   A piece in The Raw Story looks at the ugly underbelly of Graham's "career."   Here are excerpts:

Graham is getting tributes from all corners right now. And he deserves praise for supporting the civil rights movement, supporting Nelson Mandela during his imprisonment and embracing Muhammad Ali during the fall-out of his conversion to Islam. All those good deeds will be covered in great detail today.

But while Graham certainly did many great things, he also said and did some awful things. And because he was so respected, his deeds were very influential.

Graham helped normalize ultra-rich pastors. Graham’s wealth, and focus on more wealth, was modest compared to the televangelists preaching the prosperity gospel today. His net worth was estimated at $25 million.

Graham once preached that AIDS was the judgement of God. “Is AIDS a judgment of God? . . . Graham quickly backtracked on this one, saying that he didn’t believe that and didn’t know why he said it. Nevertheless, this dog-whistle was heard by too many.

Graham wrote a memo to President Nixon urging him to commit a war crime in Vietnam. Unlike many Christian leaders, Graham supported a very specific military strategy in the Vietnam war. He wanted Nixon to use nuclear weapons to destroy the dikes that manage flooding in North Vietnam. This plan was something Henry Kissinger dismissed as “just too much.”

Graham was anti-Semitic. . . . . For example, after taped conversations revealed that Graham made anti-Semitic statements to President Nixon. Specifically, he told the president that Jews control the media, and that this was dangerous: “This stranglehold has got to be broken or this country’s going down the drain.” Nixon agreed with this, and Graham suggested that if he got elected to a second term “we might be able to do something.” Graham would later point out that he had Jewish friends.
 Graham had backward views on women. He criticized feminism, and is the namesake of that weird rule that Mike Pence lives by, never spending any time alone with any woman besides his wife.
 Graham raised his boy wrong. In his 1997 autobiography, Graham was regretful of his involvement in politics, writing that, “If I had to do it all over again, I would also avoid any semblance of involvement in partisan politics… And yet, Graham failed to impart this wisdom on his son Franklin Graham, who took over the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and who has taken the lead in defending and legitimizing Donald Trump to evangelicals.

The comment in the piece about Graham's son is an understatement as to the lengths Franklin Graham has thrown aside supposed "Christian" values in supporting Trump, Roy Moore and other morally bankrupt Republicans.  His sister Ann Graham Lotz is no better and fully fits the scamvangelist model established by her father who made being a "professional Christian" a route to personal financial wealth.  Graham and his children excelled at claiming the Bible inerrant yet ignored any passages not supportive of their personal and political agendas. 

One of Billy Graham's last public acts was in 2012 - possible under his son's coercion - when he was trotted out to endorse North Carolina's Amendment 1 that banned marriage equality.  As a piece in Huffington Post by an activist friend notes, Graham's statement appeared in full page ads in 14 newspapers across North Carolina.  Graham was no friend to the LGBT community and he was no supporter of equality under the law. 

The Right's Continued Hypocrisy-Filled Anti-Gay Bigotry

It is 2017, yet in the minds of many on the political right, if they had their way, it would still be the 1950's.   Institutionally, the Republican Party continues to officially oppose LGBT rights and, in fact, the party's 2016 national platform is the most homophobic in history. Making good on this declared agenda, the Trump/Pence regime is rolling back LGBT protections instituted by the Obama administration and we have witnessed in two cases before the U.S. Supreme Court where the U.S. Department of Justice has filed briefs that support anti-LGBT discrimination, one which argues that employers should be free to fire LGBT employees due to their sexual orientation and the other that Christofascists have the right to ignore non-discrimination and public  accommodation laws. All of which encourages the modern day Pharisees among the godly folk to discard their children like useless trash and/or withdraw all financial support at age 18.  The result?  40% of homeless youths are LGBT  and far too many would be college students lack finances to allow them to attend college.  

In recognition of this reality and in honor of my parents who accepted me when I came out unlike so many parents, I established and provided the original endowment for a scholarship for graduating LGBT high school students from the Hampton Roads area.  Likewise recognizing this sad reality, The Serpentine Society, an alumni organization at the University of Virginia (my alma mater) has established a scholarship for gay male students.  A similar scholarship exists for lesbian students.  This is all too much for the right wingers who strive to perpetuate a climate of discrimination and then whine when victims organize to help others in the targeted class.  To the falsely sanctimonious "conservatives" - bigots is a more apt description - the scholarship amounts to horrific "identity politics" which are seemingly only acceptable when put forward by white supremacists.  A column at "The College Fix" which holds itself out as "right minded news from across the nation"  whines in part as follows:

In one instance we are asked to accept everyone as moral equals; in another instance we are expected to accept very specialized and preferential treatment for certain demographics. The former is good; the latter suggest that there is something markedly different about the target group, something worth treating them differently than the rest of the population.

My response? What assholes, pardon "my French."  You support discrimination and the ostracizing of gays  based typically on Bronze Age era derived religious belief and then get your panties in a knot when something is done to address the consequences of the bigotry to strive to cultivate.   I suspect that the author of the piece finds scholarships for blacks and other minorities demonized by the right as offensive as well. The hypocrisy is off the charts.  Kudos to the Serpentine Society.  And, yes, I have joined it.

HGTV's Joanna and Chip Gaines - Still Typical Anti-Gay Hypocrites?

A little over a month ago I wrote a post that looked at a story at  BuzzFeed about "Fixer Upper" stars Joanna and Chip Gaines who it turned out attend a church headed by a stridently anti-gay pastor who opposes gay rights and supports fraudulent "ex-gay" conversion therapy that is condemned by every legitimate medical and mental health association in America,  Moreover, BuzzFeed pointed out, the Gaines, unlike many of the remodeling and flip shows on HGTV, do mot work with same sex couples.   Neither of the Gaines have directly responded to the story although their pastor Jimmy Seibert says emphatically in his sermon: “Business leaders, you will have to be clear about who you are. And you will have to be willing to stand to lose even a deal or two.  As I frequently note, one of the favorite tactics of anti-gay Christian zealots - hate merchants is actual a more appropriate term - is to the claim that they and their ignorance and hate based beliefs deserve to be treated with respect and tolerance even as they spread lies and hatred about LGBT citizens who are merely seeking the same civil rights that heterosexuals have enjoyed for centuries. 

Now, via a "New Year's Resolution," Chip Gaines has floated a non-answer to what he and his wife really believe.  Instead of addressing the issue head on, we are treated to a nice sounding statements that sound like something a politician speaking out of both sides of his or her mouth might say: 

If Joanna and I, who are best friends, don’t see lots of things the same way – how on earth do we expect a world of strangers to magically align? The reality is, we may not all get on the same page and I think that’s okay.”

“If there is any hope for all of us to move forward, to heal and to grow – we have got to learn to engage people who are different from us with dignity and with love. Joanna and I have personal convictions. One of them is this: we care about you for the simple fact that you are a person, our neighbor on planet earth. It’s not about what color your skin is, how much money you have in the bank, your political affiliation, sexual orientation, gender, nationality or faith.

“In 2017: We have decided to change the conversation.

You wanna talk about how to build bridges between people that disagree? We want to be a part of that conversation. Do you want to talk about healing and compassion and kindness and restoration? We’re in the restoration business, we can for sure make time for that.”

Restoration business?  Does that include "fixing" gays?  The Christofascist are always claiming to love gays via the bullshit excuse of "love the sinner, but hate the sin."  Meanwhile, of course, they do all they can to harm LGBT individuals and deprive us of civil rights and, in some cases argue for our execution.  Sorry, Chip, but I am not buying your attempt to calm the waters so as to protect your money making endeavors.  I won't be tuning into your show and I sure as Hell will not be buying any of your products. I will "love" you the same way your church and pastor love me, which is not at all.. 

Ben Carson: The Face of aHomophobia

Among the Republican Party base - especially the older elements - it is an unwritten rule that one must oppose same sex marriage and all too often gay rights in general.  These same folks, of course, take great offense at being labeled the bigots they are in fact.  More often than not, they cloak their bigotry in "deeply held religious belief" which in my book equates to being too ignorant and/or too fearful to admit that for their own screwed up psychological reasons, they cannot let go of the fantasy world brainwashing they endured as children.  Symptomatic of this phenomenon is GOP 2016 presidential candidate Ben Carson who played the victim card made the false assertion during last weeks GOP circus debate that opposing same sex marriage doesn't make one a homophobe.  A column in Huffington Post takes Carson to task and bursts his bullshit argument.  Here are column excerpts:

Ben Carson spoke for all those who are swept up by irrational fear and now see themselves as the victims of supposed "enemies" who won't allow those fears to bolster discrimination against people when he said: 

[The gay community] shouldn't automatically assume that because you believe that marriage is between one man and one woman that you are a homophobe. And this is one of the myths that the left perpetrates on our society, and this is how they frighten people and get people to shut up. . . . .

[W]hile there had been a debate in this country about marriage equality for, oh, 25 years or so, it is now the law of the land, after a Supreme Court ruling that decided the freedom to marry exists in the Constitution for every gay and lesbian American. And gay and lesbian people are -- and, for years, have been -- getting married by the thousands all across the country. None of the dire predictions of the anti-gay religious zealots -- of the destruction of society or the downfall of marriage as an institution -- have transpired.

So, if you're opposed to something that is now a right of every American and has been proven in court -- in the federal trial over California's Proposition 8 -- to harm no one, including children, then you do have an irrational fear of homosexuality. And certainly if you're a medical doctor yourself and you're opposed to something that the American Medical Association, American Psychological Association and American Psychiatric Association deem normal, natural and healthy and not harmful at all to anyone, then you have an irrational fear of homosexuality. And that is the essence of homophobia - a fear of homosexuality.



Just imagine if, after the Supreme Court ruled in 1967 in Loving v. Virginia, which ended state bans on interracial marriage, that a presidential frontrunner said, "It doesn't make me a racist if I don't support mixed marriages." Imagine if that candidate said such a thing right now. Would we not call that person a racist? 

So, Ben Carson, you are not only a homophobe; you're a bigot, having spewed anti-gay remarks again and again, bizarrely claiming prison turns people gay and standing firm on reckless, hateful comments in which you said homosexuality leads to bestiality and pedophilia.

The fact that you couch the fears in religious beliefs -- or even that those beliefs may have nurtured or even created those fears -- doesn't change anything. Your religion cannot be used to excuse fears that embolden you to discriminate.

The problem is yours, not ours, Dr. Carson. Phobias, you certainly should know as a neurosurgeon, require hard work and psychiatric or psychological counseling to overcome. So, I'd say, "doctor, heal thyself," but, actually, you need to get yourself some help.

Throughout history religion has been used to justify all kinds of horrors.  It is far past time in America that all deference to religious belief cease.  Folks can worship as they wish, but once the step into the public square, the rest of us have no obligation to respect their beliefs - or them.  I'd go a step further and argue that blacks who are homophobes have no basis to complain about racial discrimination.  Bigotry is bigotry and if one is going to say that one form of bigotry is acceptable, then they have no grounds to complain when another form of bigotry is aimed at them.

Negative Reactions to Anti-Gay Pope Francis Grow

While many continue to be outraged that Pope Francis met secretly with four times married, serial adulterer, and anti-gay hypocrite Kim Davis, in some ways we should be thankful that Francis perhaps unwittingly revealed that much of his display on his trip to America was just slick public relations bullshit.  Seeming meek and humble while doing evil and fanning bigotry doesn't make one a good person much less a good pontiff.   Similarly, encouraging individuals to refuse to do their sworn public duty (and receiving nice salary in the process) simply underscores the sad fact that today's "godly Christians" view themselves as entitled to special rights.  My blogger/activist friend Rev. Irene Monroe (her webpage is here) who I met in person at the 2008 LGBT blogger summit in Washington, D.C., rightly lets loose on Francis in a piece in the San Diego Gay & Lesbian News.  Similarly, Rev. Gene Robinson takes Francis to task in a piece in Time. First, here are highlights from Irene's column:

[T]he Pontiff aptly stated in his 2013 interview “the moral edifice of the church is likely to fall like a house of cards" should the Catholic Church, in this 21st Century, continue on its anti-modernity trek like his predecessor. 

With that statement I thought Francis was going to reformed, if not reinvent, an out-of-step institution, but at the end of his visit the Pope was selling sadly the same product—Catholic orthodoxy. “Nothing more, nothing less,” Francis warning reporters on his trip from Cuba to Washington, DC,.“I may have given the impression of being a little more to the left, but it would not be a correct interpretation.” 

And he’s right.  While Francis gave a well-deserved shout-out of praise to nuns—the backbone and housekeepers of the church—the ecclesiastical doors are still shut to ordaining women priest. Sadly, Francis doesn’t view the ban as a gender bias. When asked why the Pope remarked, “That can’t be done…

I recall Pope Francis’s remarks when flying home after a weeklong visit to Brazil in 2013 when he was queried about the much talked about “gay lobby” in the Vatican. “If they accept the Lord and have good will, who am I to judge them,” Francis said. This public statement is the most LGBTQ affirming remarks the world has ever heard from the Catholic Church. 

But Francis’ words don’t match his actions.

The Meeting of Families in Philadelphia included only one workshop on LGBTQ issues —a panel with a celibate gay Catholic and his mother, and no workshop on LGBTQ families. But his point about LGBTQ families and marriages got across loud and clear during his talk to Congress with his subtle jab at gay marriage: "I cannot hide my concern for the family, which is threatened, perhaps as never before, from within and without. Fundamental relationships are being called into question, as is the very basis of marriage and the family.“ 

Francis’s trip to Our Lady Queen of Angels School in Harlem was important. The structural racism in the Catholic Church has made it an unwelcoming place of worship. African American Catholics are one of the smallest demographic groups in the church.

In Francis’s effort to reach out to his Latin Americans with the canonization of Junipero Serra, he opened old wounds with Native Americans. Serra, a Spanish missionary, left a horrific legacy trying to decimate California Native American culture. Letters to stop Serra’s canonization were written to both the Vatican and Francis but these pleas fell on deaf ears.

On the surface Francis displays a pastoral countenance to his papacy that seemingly extends to all. 

But rather we clearly see the geopolitics of a soft church bureaucrat evangelizing to today’s shrinking American Catholic Church - an institution that is less churched, less married, less white, and less conservative. And his welcoming demeanor is not enough, in my opinion, to bridge the diversity and divisions the American church faces.

Gene Robinson's column is likewise less than kind to Francis.  Here are excerpts:

 

The inmates at Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility apparently were not the only law breakers Pope Francis met with during his brief visit to the U.S. The Vatican has now confirmed that the pope met privately with Kim Davis, the county clerk in Rowan County, Ky., who notoriously went to jail rather than issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples in her jurisdiction. 

Davis broke the law and appears to be neither repentant for what she did nor sorry for the decision she made, which landed her in jail for five days. Rather, she seems proud of her act of civil disobedience, vows that she would do it again, and sincerely seems to believe she is taking one on the chin for Jesus.  

Davis seems to believe that according to her understanding of scripture, marriage is simply not possible between two people of the same gender. The pope is correct in saying that many people feel they have the right to defy a law that seems unjust or immoral, but he is wrong to think that violators of a law should go unpunished.

Let’s be clear: Those who engage in civil disobedience do so knowing that they will be punished. . . . . The whole point of civil disobedience is to go to jail—and to inspire others to go to jail—until society can’t take it anymore and demands a change in the law that sent them to jail. 

But while tone matters, there have been no substantive changes in the teaching, doctrine or policy of the church. 

With respect to people like me, who are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender, we are “intrinsically disordered,” so says the church. Let that sink in. “Intrinsically” means there’s not a damned thing you can do about it; it’s just the way you are. “Disordered” means nature has made a categorical mistake with you, you are fundamentally flawed, and the most you can hope for from the church is pity, but what you will probably get instead is condemnation and exclusion.

If the feel-good “Francis effect” lulls people into ignoring these teachings of the Roman Catholic Church, of which he is the head, then shame on us.

I believe Pope Francis has picked the wrong issue and the wrong messenger to teach about civil disobedience.

[T]he controversy surrounding this county clerk is not about what she believes, but rather about the job a county clerk is required to do by law, which includes issuing marriage licenses to those qualified couples who apply for them. Kim Davis has a constitutional right to her opinion, but she does not have a constitutional right to stay in a job whose duties she is unwilling to perform.

If Davis’s conscientious objection doesn’t inspire anyone else to go to jail for the same cause, then she is not a hero, but merely an outlier and a one-off lawbreaker. Even if he opposes marriage equality, the pope would do well to stay away from this one.

I left the Catholic Church  almost 15 years ago because I viewed the institution - especially its leadership - to be morally bankrupt.  That assessment has not change. Francis is merely putting a smiling face on an evil institution.  We must not forget that truth.