Trump preacher Franklin Graham attacks Pete Buttigieg for ‘flaunting’ sexuality
L – Franklin Graham, R – Presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg with his husband Chasten (Getty)
Evangelical preacher Franklin Graham has hit out at US presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg for “flaunting” his sexuality, suggesting he will face “eternal damnation.”
Graham, who preached at President Donald Trump’s inauguration in January 2017, hit out at Buttigieg in a Facebook post on Tuesday (April 23) after the gay Democrat spoke about his faith and sexuality during a CNN town hall on Monday (April 22).
Pete Buttigieg attacked for ‘flaunting’ sexuality
Graham wrote: “Mayor Buttigieg says he is a gay Christian and he wants to unite people behind him. I’m sure there will be many people who will want to follow. But as a Christian I believe what the Bible says.
“God’s Word defines homosexuality as sin, something to be repentant of, not something to be flaunted, praised, or politicized. The Bible defines marriage as between a man and a woman—not two men, not two women.”
He added: “The core of the Christian faith is believing and following Jesus Christ, who God sent to be the Savior of the world—to save us from sin, to save us from hell, to save us from eternal damnation.”
Graham is the son of evangelist Billy Graham and heads the international Christian charity Samaritan’s Purse.
Franklin Graham talks with President Donald Trump (Ron Sachs-Pool/Getty)
During the CNN town hall on Monday, Buttigieg said: “It can be challenging to be a person of faith who’s also part of the LGBTQ community and yet, to me, the core of faith is regard for one another, and part of God’s love is experienced, according to my faith tradition, is in the way that we support one another and, in particular, support the least among us.”
He added: “I get that one of the things about Scripture is different people see different things in it, but, at the very least we should be able to establish that God does not have a political party.”
Franklin Graham has extreme anti-LGBT record
Graham has previously praised Vladimir Putin’s anti-gay laws and told crowds in Russia that homosexuals “cannot have children, they can take other people’s children.”
He said in 2015: “I very much appreciate that President Putin is protecting Russian young people against homosexual propaganda. If only to give them the opportunity to grow up and make a decision for themselves.”
He has also claimed there had been a “moral 9/11” in America due to homosexuals and has declared that gay people are “the enemy” of civilisation.
In 2016, Graham accused LGBT activists of “trying to cram down America’s throat the lie that homosexuality is okay,” alleging that anti-discrimination laws will mean that “your children, and your grandchildren will be at risk to sexual predators and perverts.”
