Anti-Gay Pastor Billy Graham Gets a Statue in the U.S. Capitol

metroweekly.com:

Wilmington Massacre, a bloody revolt that saw dozens of Black people killed.Members of the state’s congressional delegation urged replacing the avowed segregationist Aycock with a statue of North Carolina-based Baptist minister Graham instead.Over the course of his career, Graham, who died in 2018 at the age of 99, served as a spiritual adviser to foreign leaders and various politicians, including 12 sitting presidents.Like his anti-LGBTQ son, Franklin, the elder Graham was known for his staunch religiously conservative beliefs.

While he was less vitriolic than his evangelical contemporaries, he still perpetually advocated that homosexuality was a horrible sin that only could be “cured” by re-dedicating oneself to following Christ.In 1993, he appallingly suggested that AIDS was a punishment from God for homosexuality.

After a public outcry, he backtracked from that statement.In 2012, Graham endorsed North Carolina’s voter-approved constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage.Although the amendment has since been nullified by the U.S.

Supreme Court’s 2015 ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, it remains on the books and could be enforced if a more conservative high court reverses its own precedent.Graham’s statue, sculpted by Charlotte-based artist Chas Fagan, stands 7 feet tall, and shows him gesturing toward an open Bible.