Evangelical leader says criticism of anti-gay pledge is a ‘distraction’

Evangelical leader Franklin Graham claims that he is not “condemning” gay people, despite the fact that his organization, Samaritan’s Purse, requires its staff to sign a statement saying that they are Christians and support the organization’s stance against marriage equality for LGBTQ people.

Samaritan’s Purse was invited by Mount Sinai Health System to set up a field hospital in New York City’s Central Park to treat patients with COVID-19. The 68-bed hospital opened in April, and Mount Sinai said it told Samaritan’s Purse staff to adhere to its principles and guidelines on not discriminating against patients, including on the basis of sex, gender, gender expression, or gender identity.

Now the field hospital has been dismantled and the last patients have been discharged. Its time in New York was marked by criticism of the organization by elected officials, activists, and individuals and protests against its presence in the city, which New York City Council Speaker Corey Johnson called “an affront to our values of inclusion.”

Samaritan’s Purse released a statement saying that it has wound up its operations in Central Park because “the surge in COVID hospital admissions is reaching manageable levels.”

Graham, the son of preacher Billy Graham, told the New York Times in an interview published on Sunday, “I would want the gay community to know that I’m not here condemning them at all. Just because I don’t agree doesn’t mean I’m against them.”

He said that criticism of the Central Park field hospital was a “distraction” from treating people during the pandemic.

In addition to his organization’s stance against marriage equality in its statement of faith (“marriage is exclusively the union of one genetic male and one genetic female”), Graham also has a history of making anti-LGBTQ statements.

Graham has called transgender women “pedophiles” and “sexually perverted men” as recently as 2017. He has called the fight for LGBTQ equality a “a full-scale assault against Christianity and the followers of Christ.” Last year, he told openly gay former presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg that he should be “repentant of” his sexuality because “the Bible … defines homosexuality as sin.”

In 2017 he called homosexuality “an abomination.”

In the interview with the Times, Graham said that the statement of faith was necessary for uniting the organization’s work and presence, but denied that its religious views were in any way imposed on its patients. “Our staff prays all day long,” Graham said. “They would not force themselves on somebody and try to force our religion on somebody or what we believe.”