Franklin Graham, the scion of the famous 95-year old Reverend Dr. Billy Graham, spent last month claiming that gays “recruit” children into homosexuality, and adopt them for sex. Yes, he actually accused gay people of being pedophiles, and did it with a smirk of superiority.
When given the opportunity to walk back his comments on Friday at a taping for ABC News’ “This Week,” Graham not only doubled down, he roped President Obama into the mix, and hailed Vladimir Putin as the only president who is “protecting his nation’s children.â€
Also on Friday, Graham spoke with NewsMax TV’s America’s Forum, proclaiming anti-Chrisitan attacks are “rising around the globe.” Graham then slammed the “entertainment industry, especially in certain segments of the news media,” crying, “Christians are being attacked.”
Graham went on to say, “I think we’re going to see real persecution of Christians and Jews in the years to come.”
Right Wing Watch notes that “Religious Right activists have been keen to conflate criticism and even tough questions with persecution.”
Case in point: The New Civil Rights Movement last week called out Dr. Richard Land for his ugly and wrong claim that, “the dirty little secret that nobody wants to talk about is that a high percentage of adult male homosexuals in America were sexually molested when they were children.”
(We also called Dr. Land directly and left a message — he never returned our call.)
Land, president of the Southern Evangelical Seminary, was strongly suggesting that gay people became gay because thy were sexually abused as children, and turn around and sexually abuse children. In short, Land painted an incorrect and nasty image of gays as pedophiles, despite facts to the contrary — just as the American Psychological Association has made clear.
On Twitter, the Southern Evangelical Seminary, of which Land is president, called out a New Civil Rights Movement reader for as “intolerant” for calling out Land:
@hustonpiner @gaycivilrights This is a perfect example of you being intolerant of our opinion but you demand that be tolerant of yours.
— Southern Evangelical (@sesapologetics) April 17, 2014
To some Christian extremists, facts are intolerance, facts are persecution.
Watch:
//www.youtube.com/embed/F_xJSkmzGO4
Image: YouTube