Franklin Graham is singling out and attacking Democratic presidential candidate and mayor Pete Buttigieg once again. Not former Vice President Joe Biden, not Senators Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, or Amy Klobuchar. Not Andrew Yang. Not former Rep. Beto O’Rourke. And not former housing secretary Julián Castro.
Just Pete Buttigieg.
It’s not the first time the Christian evangelical sometimes missionary sometimes political activist has attacked the mayor from South Bend, Indiana either.
And it’s not like Buttigieg holds policy positions that are so glaringly different from any of the other top ten Democratic presidential candidates that Graham was forced to speak out.
No.
Franklin Graham is attacking Pete Buttigieg because Pete Buttigieg supports same-sex marriage and a woman’s right to choose an abortion.
The same policies that are in the Democratic National Committee’s platform, that every elected national Democratic politician (except one) has supported, many for nearly a decade, if not longer.
So really, Graham is singling out Buttigieg because Buttigieg is gay. It’s homophobic bullying, the kind of bullying one might have expected from an elementary school kid. Maybe. It’s juvenile. it’s pathetic. And it’s wrong – not that Buttigieg needs anyone’s help to defend himself.
Graham is using Buttigieg’s family, and his religion, to attack him.
“Mayor Pete Buttigieg has been speaking openly about his support for abortion, which he says is a woman’s right to choose,” Graham wrote to his nearly eight million Facebook followers this week. “That’s a crock.”
“No one has the right to choose murder,” Graham continued.
“Pastor Rhyan Glezman, who is the brother of the man Mayor Pete is married to said, ‘I feel a sense of responsibility and stewardship of my faith to stand up and say something, to say, ‘No, that’s not true.'”
“Mayor Pete is trying to tell people that the homosexual lifestyle is okay with God and that abortion is okay. His brother-in-law is right when he said, ‘This is leading people astray and it’s very, very dangerous.’ God defines right and wrong, not us. As Christians, we are to live by the standards He gives us in His Word. ‘I am the Lord, and there is no other; there is no God besides Me..’ (Isaiah 45:5).”
On Facebook, Graham points his followers to an article at the far right website Townhall, “Mayor Pete Uses The Bible To Redefine When Life Begins And Now His Family Wants Him To Repent.”
Curiously, Graham finds it convenient to acknowledge Buttigieg’s brother-in-law when he refuses to acknowledge Buttigieg’s marriage.
In the recent past Graham has attacked Buttigieg, saying he will suffer “eternal damnation” if he does not “repent” his homosexuality.
That attack earned Graham the label “homophobic hatemonger” from The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin, and “gloriously irrelevant” from Graham’s own hometown newspaper.
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