{"id":32891,"date":"2017-05-03T08:06:20","date_gmt":"2017-05-03T12:06:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/?p=32891"},"modified":"2017-05-05T11:45:02","modified_gmt":"2017-05-05T15:45:02","slug":"franklin-graham-has-blood-on-his-hands","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/2017\/05\/franklin-graham-has-blood-on-his-hands.html","title":{"rendered":"Words Have Consequences: Evangelical Rhetoric and Gay Rights"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

In late 2015, Franklin Graham visited Russia to meet with leaders of the Orthodox Church. During this visit, Graham also had the opportunity to meet with Vladimir Putin. Graham brought up this visit<\/a>\u00a0in April while defending Putin against accusations of election meddling, posting this image to his twitter:<\/p>\n

\"Screen<\/p>\n

Graham\u2019s reference to this 2015 meeting\u00a0in turn brought up comments he made at the time\u00a0praising Putin for banning \u201cgay propaganda\u201d and effectively criminalizing the LGBT rights movement. As RightWingWatch reported<\/a> in November 2015:<\/p>\n

In a\u00a0trip to Russia last week<\/a>, U.S. Religious Right leader Franklin Graham praised President Vladimir Putin\u2019s protection of \u201ctraditional Christianity,\u201d including the passage of the 2013 \u201cgay propaganda<\/a>\u201d law that effectively criminalizes pro-gay-rights speech and advocacy.<\/p>\n

In an\u00a0interview with the Moskoviskij Komsomolets newspaper<\/a>, Graham criticized President Obama for supporting \u201cpolicies that contradict the teachings of God\u201d and\u00a0repeated his praise<\/a>\u00a0of Putin for \u201cprotecting Russian young people against homosexual propaganda,\u201d adding that \u201chomosexuals cannot have children, they can take other people\u2019s children,\u201d according to a transcript the newspaper provided of the interview\u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In 2014, Graham wrote an article<\/a> praising Putin\u2019s crackdown on homosexuality:<\/p>\n

In my opinion, Putin is right on these issues. Obviously, he may be wrong about many things, but he has taken a stand to protect his nation\u2019s children from the damaging effects of any gay and lesbian agenda.<\/p>\n

Our president and his attorney general have turned their backs on God and His standards, and many in the Congress are following the administration\u2019s lead. This is shameful.<\/p>\n

The world used to look to America for moral leadership. But those days are long gone.<\/p>\n

Today, we\u2019ve abdicated our moral leadership.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yes, really\u2014Graham claimed that on gay rights,\u00a0the U.S. had abdicated its moral leadership to Russia<\/em>. Of course, you likely know that I am writing this post in the aftermath of revelations of<\/a> gay torture camps in Russian Chechnya.<\/p>\n

According to one survivor who managed to escape the gay torture camps the country has set up, police are telling parents of gay men to \u201csort it out\u201d or they will take matters into their own hands.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey tell the parents to kill their child. They say \u2018Either you do it, or we will,\u2019\u201d an unidentified male told France 24 News. \u201cThey call it: \u2018Cleaning your honour with blood.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The truth is that words have consequences. Putin\u2019s hardline against homosexuality\u2014which Graham praised\u2014gave the\u00a0Chechen\u00a0president space to crack down harder on gay and lesbian residents in\u00a0his own corner of Russia. Words have consequences in the U.S., too\u2014gay teens kicked out of their homes and high teen suicide rates due to anti-gay bullying, to begin with\u2014but in the U.S., secular laws and secular norms\u00a0mean that, regardless of evangelicals\u2019 rhetoric, secular authorities are not going to round up,\u00a0imprison, torture, and kill gays and lesbians.<\/p>\n

Within the U.S., evangelicals are used to being able to inveigh against gays and lesbians\u00a0without having their literal blood on their hands. Yes, this rhetoric still has consequences\u2014and people do still die (see\u00a0teen suicides as referenced above). But the causality feels\u00a0less direct. American evangelicals do not have to watch as gay and lesbian individuals are murdered. Of course, some evangelical leaders would like<\/em> to see gay and lesbian\u00a0individuals rounded up, imprisoned, tortured, and even killed. But I suspect that most evangelicals in the U.S. today would balk at such a course of action, and acknowledge it as barbaric and wrong\u2014even if they believe\u00a0homosexual behavior is sinful.<\/p>\n

I worry that the perceived lack of consequences attached to their rhetoric may make\u00a0evangelicals like Franklin Graham blind to\u00a0the impact their\u00a0words have. In theory, making it a crime to expose young people to material or ideas that normalize homosexuality sounds good to Graham\u2014after all, evangelicals frequently inveigh against kindergarten teachers reading books like Heather Has Two Mommies<\/em> in public school. They call it gay indoctrination. It\u2019s not surprising, in this context, that Graham would praise Putin\u2019s law. But Graham does not have to live in Russia, and watch the consequences.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s all very neat and tidy, inveighing against homosexuality from within a country that protects gay and lesbian individuals\u2019 right to free speech, to life, and to liberty\u00a0(if not\u00a0their freedom from employment discrimination). It means Graham doesn\u2019t have to watch as gay and lesbian individuals are sent to jail for speaking in favor of their rights in Russia, as gay and lesbian individuals live in hiding and terror in Uganda, as gay and lesbian individuals are rounded up, tortured, and killed in Russian Chechnya. I mention Uganda because we\u2019ve seen this before\u2014cases where evangelical\u00a0leaders\u00a0export their ideas to other countries, with dire consequences and in a far more lethal form.<\/p>\n

Gay and lesbian individuals in the U.S. are not rounded up, imprisoned, tortured, or killed because gay rights activists have worked tirelessly for decades to prevent these things from happening<\/em>. And they\u2019ve been successful\u2014they\u2019ve changed public opinion and have gained public acceptance. But the fact that their efforts\u00a0have been foiled in the U.S. does not give American evangelicals the license to forget that arrests, imprisonment, torture, and killings is where their rhetoric leads.\u00a0<\/em>And where it has led, in other countries\u2014and is leading today.<\/p>\n

Evangelicals need to be held responsible for this rhetoric. And we can start with Franklin Graham, who has blood on his hands.<\/p>\n

I have a <\/b>Patreon<\/b><\/a>! Please support my writing!<\/b><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Within the U.S., evangelicals are used to being able to inveigh against gays and lesbians without having their literal blood on their hands. Yes, this rhetoric still has consequences—and people do still die (see teen suicides as referenced above). But the causality feels less direct. American evangelicals do not have to watch as gay and lesbian individuals are rounded up, imprisoned, tortured, and even killed. <\/p>\n

Click through to read more!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":845,"featured_media":32894,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[648,282],"class_list":["post-32891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-evangelicalism-fundamentalism","tag-franklin-graham","tag-lgbt"],"yoast_head":"\nWords Have Consequences: Evangelical Rhetoric and Gay Rights<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Within the U.S., evangelicals are used to being able to inveigh against gays and lesbians without having their literal blood on their hands.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/2017\/05\/franklin-graham-has-blood-on-his-hands.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Words Have Consequences: Evangelical Rhetoric and Gay Rights\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Within the U.S., evangelicals are used to being able to inveigh against gays and lesbians without having their literal blood on their hands.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/2017\/05\/franklin-graham-has-blood-on-his-hands.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Love, Joy, Feminism\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2017-05-03T12:06:20+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2017-05-05T15:45:02+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/166\/2017\/05\/fence-2163951_1920.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"768\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"508\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Libby Anne\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Libby Anne\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/2017\/05\/franklin-graham-has-blood-on-his-hands.html\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/2017\/05\/franklin-graham-has-blood-on-his-hands.html\",\"name\":\"Words Have Consequences: Evangelical Rhetoric and Gay Rights\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2017-05-03T12:06:20+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2017-05-05T15:45:02+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/#\/schema\/person\/fae465c1bbb5cbdf26c9e73bfd1b73d2\"},\"description\":\"Within the U.S., evangelicals are used to being able to inveigh against gays and lesbians without having their literal blood on their hands.\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/2017\/05\/franklin-graham-has-blood-on-his-hands.html#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/2017\/05\/franklin-graham-has-blood-on-his-hands.html\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/2017\/05\/franklin-graham-has-blood-on-his-hands.html#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Words Have Consequences: Evangelical Rhetoric and Gay Rights\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/\",\"name\":\"Love, Joy, Feminism\",\"description\":\"\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/#\/schema\/person\/fae465c1bbb5cbdf26c9e73bfd1b73d2\",\"name\":\"Libby Anne\",\"description\":\"Libby Anne grew up in a large evangelical homeschool family highly involved in the Christian Right. 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