Franklin Graham: A Dishonest Christian

If you're telling a story and you leave out the most important fact, are you a liar?

If so, then it seems to me Franklin Graham is a Big Fat Liar. I just heard him interviewed on CNN (sorry, no web video yet), and what a sleaze he's turned out to be. Billy Graham should be ashamed of his son.

CNN was interviewing Franklin Graham because he started a campaign to oust Obama from the Presidency in 2012. Graham has his underwear all in a knot because he was invited to pray at the Pentagon for the National Day of Prayer (which, by the way, has been declared unconstitutional by a district court), and then uninvited because of his disrespectful remarks about Islam. He called Islam an evil, dangerous religion.

I have no problem with his opinion about Islam – he's entitled to say what he likes. And he must understand that when he takes a stance like that he won't be invited to speak to and pray for our men and women in arms, many of whom are Muslims. I have no problem with religious leaders slinging mud at each other. I do it all the time. But someone calls Islam a dangerous, evil religion, that person shouldn't expect to lead our armed forces in prayer.

Graham wants it both ways. He wants to insult others and then expects to be invited to preach his brand of religion to the very people he insulted.

Graham's true sleaziness comes out when he insinuates it is anti-Christian discrimination, that he was being uninvited because of his strong Christian beliefs rather than because of his anti-Islam statements. That's not just disingenuous, it's dishonest.

Now he's having a hissy fit. He's blaming Obama for all of this. He says any one of the previous presidents, Bush, Clinton, Bush Sr. and "especially Jimmy Carter" would have stepped in and overruled the Pentagon. Obama, it seems is anti-evangelical, and the fact that Graham was barred from leading prayers at the Pentagon is the proof. Not once in that interview did Graham mention his own role, that he'd called Islam "dangerous" and "evil." Not once did he acknowledge that there are Muslims in our armed forces who might be deeply offended by his rhetoric.

Watch this CNN interview if you want to see why Graham isn't welcome at the Pentagon. The man is an artful dodger, slipping and sliding away from every one of Campbell Brown's questions. He is not a man who stands by his convictions. He makes insinuations about Obama and then weasels out of naming names.

He's a politician, not a preacher.