Franklin Graham–Today’s Daily Douche-Bag Award

Right now, it’s pretty hard to decide who to give our Douche-bag of the Day Award. There are just so many people vying for the honor, with lots of pastors leading the pack. Some awful things have been said in “Jesus’ name,” and we’ll get to those, but I decided to pull out Franklin Graham from that deck first.

Graham has one of the largest followings, and his secretary, who I spoke with, assured me she knows his heart, and he doesn’t hate anyone. I told her I knew his heart too, and it was full of either greed or hate (maybe both), and that I wanted him to stop claiming he was a Christian, in that it made the rest of look bad. That people like him have worked hard to make embarrassing to say you’re a Christian.

Franklin never misses a chance to blame every bad thing that happens to anyone else on LGBT people. According to him, we’re responsible for floods, terrorist attacks, hurricanes, just about any calamity. But when the calamity befalls our own community, he apparently struggles a little to come up with something meaningful. So, his solution, apparently, was to claim about the worst possible false equivalency one can imagine. Here’s what he had to say about the Orlando Massacre (because it always has to be about “his kind of Christians”):

Mr. President, I read in the The New York Times today where you reportedly blasted Donald J. Trump for wanting to tighten the borders and accused him of painting a whole religion as violent.

A Muslim can murder 49 innocent people in a gay club, and you still defend the religion of Islam.

But a Christian who refuses to bake a homosexual’s wedding cake endures prosecution, financial ruin, and nation-wide shaming because of their faith, and you stay silent!

What Omar Mateen did was following the teachings of the Koran. It is incomprehensible that you will not acknowledge the dangers of Islam’s teachings in order to protect the American people under your watch.

Let’s look all that’s wrong with Graham’s statement. First, I can’t figure out what closing our borders has to do with this…Uh, little Frankie, the shooter was a U.S. Citizen. Second, Obama was right to blast Trump for disparaging an entire religion. Graham’s lack of introspection is astonishing. He’s the first one to claim that any person committing a heinous act in the name of his religion is not really a Christian, and all Christians shouldn’t be lumped together. Here, here, little Frankie, but that cuts both ways.

Christians have murdered a lot of people in mass shootings in this country, no single group is more guilty of harassing, bullying, beating, and otherwise harming LGBT in the West than Christians, so just stop with that mess. All the Christians who do these things (all get to a bunch of them in this series) all claim biblical authority when they do it. The teachings of the Koran are no more violent and hateful than those of the Bible. Certainly there are people who understand that’s why we don’t take their teachings literally, and look for the arc of their teachings, but surely plenty do take them literally, in both religious traditions.

But here’s the really most insulting part of his comment. Just so we’re clear about this, he’s comparing a mass murder wherein 49 people were killed and over 50 injured to the fact that a baker somewhere was found guilty of violating a STATE law which said they couldn’t discriminate against LGBT people. Ahhh, how sad for them. They elected to close their business, and run it out of their home so they no longer had to comply with the state law, and got a huge “go-fund-me” payoff of several hundred thousand dollars. Graham thinks that is the equivalent to having 49 people killed and over 50 injured, just for being gay.

I asked his secretary how she would feel if one of the people killed was one of her children, would she think it compares to someone being expected to serve everyone equally? That’s when she wanted to end the call.

So, because he has been so consistent in his hate and statements of false equivalence, and because he has a big following, we’re going to give Franklin Graham today’s Daily Douche-Bag Award.