Does anyone else find Billy Graham's sudden anti-gay fervor a bit odd?

[Adenoid_Hynkel]

Say what you will about Graham, he's never really done the hot button social issue thing like Falwell and the rest did, and strived to be somewhat more moderate in his public persona.

His recent 'statements' issued by his ministry sound suspiciously more like the words and attitudes of his wingnutty, birthery son Franklin, and one can't help but wonder if any of this is really coming from him.

Is Franklin trying to stamp his dad's brand on all of his own pet causes like the Chik-Fil-A issue?

For the press to simply accept these remarks as Graham's own words without question , despite the fact that he hasn't done an interview in years, and is well-known to be in poor health, seems a bit lazy and irresponsible.

This column on the Huffington Post echos this opinion:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-knight/billy-graham-is-not-an-anti-gay-bigot_b_1716448.html

[MotherPetrie]

1. No. Once a bigot, always a bigot.

[morningfog]

2. Billy Graham is still alive?!!!??!!? Holy shit.

I thought he was dead. Well, caring what he thought died long ago anyways,

[pipoman]

7. No doubt..I thought he was dead years ago..

[Fumesucker]

3. His conversations with Tricky Dicky were hardly free of bigotry..

http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/2009-06-24-graham-tapes_N.htm

A 1973 conversation between President Nixon and evangelist Billy Graham about Jews, laden with critical references including a Biblical verse on the "synagogue of Satan," has put the aging, frail Graham back in unwelcome headlines.

The conversation is part of newly-released secretly recorded tapes from the Nixon presidency, from the U.S. National Archives in College Park, Md., and the Richard Nixon Presidential Library in Yorba Linda, Calif. A sampling of more than 150 hours of tape recordings and 30,000 pages of documents from two months in 1973 were made public Tuesday (download at Nixon.archives.gov/National Archives), culled from 4,000 hours of taped meetings and phone calls in a two-year period.

An earlier release of tapes in 2002 shocked fans of Graham, who is heard agreeing with Nixon as the president rails against liberal Jews' political activism and media clout. Graham tells Nixon how Jews befriend him but adds, "They don't know how I really feel about what they're doing to this country."

[Grave Grumbler]

4. Is anything he's recently said contradictory to his past positions?

[Adenoid_Hynkel]

6. Yes - very much so

At a San Francisco Crusade in 1997 Billy Graham stated: “There are other sins. Why do we jump on that sin [homosexuality] as though it’s the greatest sin?…What I want to preach about in San Francisco is the love of God. People need to know that God loves them no matter what their ethnic background or sexual orientation. I have so many gay friends, and we remain friends” (“Graham Welcomes Gays at San Francisco,” Christian News, Oct. 20, 1997, p. 7).

http://achurchforstarvingartists.wordpress.com/2012/05/06/an-open-love-letter-to-my-n-c-kin/

Compare that to this recent quote, that Graham supposedly "wrote:"

"When she (Ruth) finished a section describing the terrible downward spiral of our nation’s moral standards and the idolatry of worshiping false gods such as technology and sex, she startled me by exclaiming, “If God doesn’t punish America, He’ll have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/26/billy-grahams-prayer-lett_n_1705811.html?utm_hp_ref=religion

[Grave Grumbler]

9. Interesting...while it doesn't prove your hypothesis,

it does lend credence to it.

[Adenoid_Hynkel]

11. You'd think the media attributing the "quotes" to Graham would, at the least, demand an interview

If Graham is supposedly in good enough health to launch ad campaigns, compose calls to action and send out e-mails, then surely he can handle a short 10-15 minute interview to verify that this stuff is really coming from him, rather than Franklin and co.

It just amazes me that the media is so willing to reprint faceless organizational press releases without any questions.

[Adenoid_Hynkel]

13. and "Ailing Billy Graham Inspires S.F. Crowd / He welcomes gays, all believers"

another one from the same event that doesn't seem to match up with Graham of 2012:
http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Ailing-Billy-Graham-Inspires-S-F-Crowd-He-2825729.php

[freshwest]

5. His alleged pronouncements don't sound like the word of a man who is apparently confined to bed and

Was said to be near death years ago. His wife never had much to say either. I think the kids are running the show and putting out fake statements as they are on the payroll of conservatives. I could be completely wrong.

I listened to sermons from him year ago. He was for civil rights, but also had some views and associations I didn't care for. It's possible he's speaking from his death bed. It's disappointing to see him in secular government this way:

...He also spoke against racial segregation during the 1960s. Graham did not want to speak to segregated auditoriums. He even once tore down ropes that had been put up to split the audience. Graham paid bail money to get Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. out of jail. That was during the 1960s American Civil Rights Movement. He asked King to join him in the pulpit at the revival meeting at New York City in 1957. During that 16-week tour, he was heard by many people, who came to hear him at Madison Square Garden, Yankee Stadium and the Times Square.[2] Because they became good friends, Graham was one of the few white people King let call him by his birth name "Michael"...[16]
[change]
...During the Apartheid times, Graham would not go to South Africa until the government let all people sit together.[18] He finally preached his first crusade there in 1973, during which he taught that apartheid was not right...

In politics, Graham was a member of the Democratic Party, but changed to Republican during the presidency of his friend Richard Nixon. He is no party member, because he says that Jesus did not have a political party. Though he does not support people running on politics in general, he has given his support in some cases over the years.
[change]

http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Graham

[Zoeisright]

8. Perhaps he has dementia.

His "reasoning" sure sounds like it. There's someone else I thought was dead. Unfortunately not.

[JI7]

10. yeah, someone else mentioned this in an earlier thread on This

that his son is probalby taking advantage of it and releasing statements claiming his dad made them when he probably didn't .

isn't that a sin , to do something like that ?

[Lint Head]

12. Billy Graham is crackers!

[arely staircase]

14. i find it downright

suspicious. Given the fact that he and his son clearly disagreed with each other on.some cultural hot buttons (the boy attacking Muslims, while the old man explicitly refused to do so) it seems rather peculiar that now that the relatively open minded father is so old that he doesn't make public appearances, his opinions are suddenly more like the son's.