For Billy Graham. A Tribute. Written on the Day he Died.

Two years ago, the most famous Christian evangelist of the twentieth century died. I wrote a tribute to him.

Two years on, it's his son Franklin in the news after every arena in the UK in which he was booked to speak cancelled their bookings, citing his outspoken views on LGBT people and Islam but definitely not cancelling because of the traditional Christian salvation story he preaches. In all of this, freedom to believe and preach that version of a tale of redemption was never threatened but the safety and well-being of other people to whom hateful things are said was judged to outweigh that religious freedom.

Some Christians are very cross that Franklin Graham's arena visits were cancelled. Others were pleased and many Christians were among those who campaigned and wrote to the arenas. Graham is currently setting the wheels of legal action in process with expensive lawyers. Just like Jesus never did whenever he was challenged! Prayer to keep the arena events failed. Maybe lawyers can succeed.

This is not for Franklin Graham though. This is dedicated to Billy. It doesn't touch on his views on women, his statement that the Jews control the media, or his affection for Kim Il-Sung. It doesn't touch on his refusal to have racial segregation in his rallies as early as 1953 or his campaign against apartheid and his prison correspondence with Nelson Mandela. He was a man with good and bad qualities, much like us all.

Billy Graham. Photo taken from this excellent article.

Tribute to one of the most successful Christian preachers of the 20th century.

Billy Graham is dead. A man of energy, zeal, passion. A man who continued to walk a path even when hated or threatened. We can all learn from these qualities.

I will say this for him: He believed what he did in the face of praise and adulation - almost worship. He continued to believe to in the face of rejection and ridicule. [And in the face of reason too.] Truly, Billy Graham did his best.

However, to you Billy I say this:

Farewell, you who believed that we all so far fallen that we deserve to burn for eternity and need bloodletting to happen before an omnipotent merciful deity could ever forgive us. Farewell you who preyed upon the insecurities of millions and convinced them that Jesus was the only way they wouldn't suffer agony for eternity. Farewell preacher of the old, old gospel horror story of plunging people into a fountain running with human blood.

Farewell, you enthusiastic bigot whose words and ways harmed so many thousands of LGBT+ people and continue to harm thousands more.

You said you thought AIDS is a judgement from God. And then back tracked when you realised your words would get you into trouble. You actively supported anti-gay legislation. Your organisation still promotes gay "cure" "therapy". You believed homosexuality to be a "sinister form of perversion."

Your children are even worse than you. You raised them to be bigots too. Jesus won't be saying "Well done good and faithful servant" about that.

Your son says that gay people are the enemy and that gay people are causing a "moral 9/11".

There's a campaign to keep your son out of our country this year. A campaign started by some Christians. Nice Christians. Faithful Christians. Strong believers. Christians who are happy to have a deep faith in Jesus but would never ever dream of thinking of any human being as an abomination or turning religious freedom into an excuse for bigotry or hatred. Not twisted up Christians like your children were raised to be.

Your daughter said that God allows events like the actual 9/11 because he is so worried about transgender people. And if we don't let transgender people go to the toilet God will protect us from storms too.

The God of your children is a scumbag. Worse. Much worse. But I am being restrained.

Farewell Billy Graham.

I hope your brand of religion dies soon. I hope every similar brand - of whatever title, God, dogma, holy book, or damnable manipulation - dies. The human race shouldn't be held back by the likes of you or such versions of spirituality any longer.

I hope if you do get to your heaven you'll be welcomed there by a posse of glitter wearing queer people who hadn't even said the Sinner's Prayer, including atheists, pagans and Muslims, and be so disgusted by it all that you walk out of paradise.

Farewell Billy Graham.

I am sad to say that I once approved of you whole heartedly. But I learned. May your children learn. May all they have convinced of their darkness learn too.

May your followers and theirs turn to the light and be healed of the scars of a gospel that taught them of their own depravity and of how much they deserved condemnation before dangling the carrot of salvation in front of them in their despair. A story of hope given to those whose hope had been stolen from them by a thief. May your followers have that stolen hope returned.