Raft of anti-LGBT clergy booked for Trump’s inauguration
A number of anti-LGBT clergy have been booked to give readings at President-elect Trump’s inauguration, it has been announced.
In a statement released yesterday (December 28), the billionaire’s transition team announced a number of religious figures would speak at the event, including Reverend Franklin Graham and Archbishop Timothy Dolan.
Rev. Graham has been an outspoken critic of the LGBT community for years.
As well as supporting a constitutional amendment in North Carolina to ban same-sex marriage, he has called gay people “the enemy”, claimed businesses that oppose LGBT protections are enabling predators and refused to buy Girl Scout cookies because they support LGBT people.
His sister, Anne Graham, also caused outrage by suggesting 9/11 was caused because God was angry that trans people used the bathroom that corresponded with their gender identity.
Rev. Graham, who is head of the Christian charity, Samaritan’s Purse, believes the United States is on a “spiritual cliff” because of the increasing amount of pro-LGBT legislation and court judgements and praised Russia’s gay propaganda law.
Archbishop Dolan tried to prevent New York from introducing equal marriage in 2011 by comparing it to incest.
The Cardinal claimed that the only reason his side lost the argument was because it had been “outmarketed” by those in favour of marriage equality.
According to Right Wing Watch, Dr Samuel Rodriguez of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, who will deliver the opening prayer alongside Archbishop Dolan and Pastor Paula White, criticised the Supreme Court’s decision to radically transform marriage “via the conduit of judicial and executive fiat”.
Little is known on the record of Pastor Paula White’s LGBT record, though she did hold a vigil for the Pulse nightclub victims in her Florida church.
The only non-Christian speaker is Rabbi Marvin Hier of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre who is not known to be anti-LGBT and runs the Los Angeles’ Museum of Tolerance, which recognises LGBT persecution.
It is understood that no Imam or representative of the Islamic faith will speak at the inauguration.
