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#LGBTQFamilies, children, Christian, church, faith, family, Franklin Graham, gay, God, LGBT, LGBT Youth, LGBTQ, Moms of LGBT, Moms of LGBTQ Kids, parent, parents, relationships, same sex relationships, Serendipitydodah for Moms, Stories That Change The World, Story
Stories have the power to change the world … they inspire us, teach us, connect us. This is the sixteenth installment in the “Stories That Change The World” series.
Yesterday morning Franklin Graham announced he was going to share an important message for LGBT people and today he posted his message. It was full of harmful theology that makes loving mothers keep their lgbt kids as far away from church as possible. Here is “an important message for Franklin Graham.”
Dear Franklin Graham,
I have a private Facebook support group for Christian moms of lgbt kids. The group presently has more than 800 members. The love and support that exists in the community we have together is priceless. The group is not about trying to change our kids or treating them like they are broken because of their sexual orientation. The group is about us helping each other learn to develop and maintain healthy, loving, authentic relationships with our kids and inspiring one another to play a small part in making the world a kinder, safer, more loving place for lgbt people to live into the people they were created to be.
So many of the moms in the group have left the local church because it was no longer a safe place for their family. It was a place that marginalized and shamed them and their lgbt kid. It was a place that set up hopelessness and despair in the hearts of their child. It was a place that refused to re-examine their theology regarding same sex relationships even though their theology was producing death instead of life … spiritual death, relational death, emotional death and even physical death.
Good theology should produce good fruit – good theology should produce good psychology.
When our theology is producing hopelessness, despair, self loathing, self destruction and self harm it is time to stand up and say “we must have something wrong!!!”
Your message to lgbt people today was irresponsible and harmful. If you understood anything about lgbt people and their families you would at least know that posting a public message like that could potentially push a young lgbt person to the brink of doing something harmful to themselves. I can’t fathom why you would act so carelessly. It is truly beyond my understanding.
If you can’t bring yourself to become better informed, to have more compassion and love for lgbt people and their families and to act more responsibly then at least be kind enough to let these families walk away in peace and find Christian fellowship and community that is safe and life producing somewhere else.
Your post has already been liked by more than 60,000 and shared more than 25,000 times. Your influence is substantial and you are doing so much harm. You will be held accountable for the harm you do. Please stop!
And remember … the only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love … and love does not produce death.
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There are more than 800 moms of lgbt kids in my Facebook support group. It is a place where moms of lgbt kids find and give a lot of support and share a lot of information. If you are interested in joining the private Facebook group for moms of lgbt kids send an email to lizdyer55@gmail.com and put“Mom’s Facebook Group” as the subject.
Serendipitydodah 
Franklin Graham is another person who doesn’t understand the way the world works today and he has put God in a box as to who deserves grace or not. This is one person who does some things right but most things wrong. He is part of the problem with people leaving the church behind because it has become a very mean place.
Tony, thanks for weighing in! You are right – he does do some things that are right. I pray that he will focus on doing those things that are life producing and stop sharing messages that harm the very souls of people.
I think a lot of Christians, including Franklin Graham, have hearts of stone when it comes to LGBT people. They can’t get past their belief that it is a choice, so therefore, deserves condemnation.
I respect and appreciate all the Graham Foundation has done around the globe, but Franklin is in need of a true encounter with Jesus. That’s what I’m praying for. Anytime I read his posts, I literally begin to feel sick to my stomach.
Outstanding response, Liz. Thank you.
Liz you are such a strong comforting voice for the LGBT community. Whenever I read your words I feel as if they were coming from my own heart. Thank you for this wise heartfelt response filled with love and hope.
Well done, Liz. Well done.
Thank you, Liz, for once again sharing thoughtfully and lovingly to someone, Franklin Graham, who is filled with fear and hate. In my opjnion, he is doing his best to divide and has succeeded in leading many people to a place of hate instead of love. It is tragic how many people he incites to riot in his mis-guided ways. They are following a false god in his theology.
I wrote a little bit about Rev. Graham’s truth today. If your truth leads people away from love, it’s not a truth worth sharing. http://knittingsoul.com/2015/12/01/about-loving-people-enough-to-tell-them-the-truth/
Thank you, Liz, for expressing our feelings so eloquently.
Many Christians have an absolute, fixed interpretation of Bible scriptures that they are not ever going to veer from. I don’t think we can change that. All we can do is continue to “walk in love” (Ephesians 5:2), and thus rise above them.
This open letter is a fine example of speaking truth to power with grace and dignity. Thank you, Liz, for the support you offer to your group.
Thanks Liz. Franklin Graham is certainly doing more harm than good. He is not only turning away the LGBTQ community, but he is making Christians seem foolish and hateful to the world Pray that he repents and asks God to forgive him for the damage he is causing to the least of these
I think Franklin needs to go back and read some the words that his dad spoke several years ago. I will do some searching but I am thinking that in the last of Billly’s quoted words he had become a lot more accepting of ALL persons.
He never allowed the theme of love of God to overwhelm the message. But it became a larger part of what he presented as the years passed. He resolutely refused to condemn anyone to hell. And he received great pressure to say that people who had not been saved by faith in Jesus Christ would go to hell. And he would never, never say that. He simply said, “My sole job is to present the Gospel and leave the rest to God.”
Source: The Charlotte Observer – November 6, 2014
Tim Funk.[A reporter with The Charlotte Observer had interviewed Grant Wacker, a professor of Christian history at Duke University Divinity School, regarding Wacker’ biography of Billy Graham entitled “America’s Pastor: Billy Graham and the Shaping of a Nation.”
Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/living/religion/article9228998.html#storylink=cpy
Oh Liz, thank you! This is so good and comes from my heart too. I am grieving today for all those individuals and families who are harmed today from FG’s message. But…love prevails.
Thank you Liz for expressing what so many of us feel regarding the harm that Franklin Graham poses for LGBT individuals and the families that love them.
Reblogged this on Michael Moore's Blog and commented:
Well said, Liz! The hate spewed by Franklin Graham has been around for years sadly… From Muslims to LGBTQ to anybody who doesn’t believe in his rigid and pharasaic version of faith… He doesn’t speak for this Christ-follower and pastor!
And that ^^^ is why you are so loved by Stacey and me! Miss knowing you are nearby but know in my heart you are always there.
We miss you guys too ❤️❤️
I struggle. I have a visceral, negative reaction to people who claim both “traditional sexual ethic” and “love”. To me, those concepts are mutually exclusive.
How can someone adhere to a theology that pathologizes gay people, insists we are immoral and our relationships are inferior; then claim love? How can someone put limits on relationship – accepting only those gay people who commit to celibacy (or, more fraught, enter into mixed orientation marriages) as faithful Christians within the communion; then claim love? How can someone express the view that gay couples should be stigmatized and marginalized – how can they “fight the normalization of homosexuality”; then claim love?
To them I say: conditional love isn’t actual love. To them I say: advocating maltreatment of gay people in the church and in society isn’t love. To them I say: if you truly believe the traditionalist doctrine, then you don’t show gay people love; you show us your disdain.
It doesn’t matter how nice or sincere traditionalists are, their harmful belief is no less harmful and their contempt for gay people is no less contemptuous.
I’ve run out of patience and understanding. Perhaps that makes me a bad Christian or a bad person. But my heart breaks for the thirteen year old gay kid in the front pew of the traditionalist church. Traditionalist beliefs are inherently harmful and therefore intolerable.
You’re in good company, Ford. The moms in our group are just as concerned as you for the 13 year old in the front pew who is learning to hate and hide who she is. We are concerned that FG and his ilk prefer to suggest we (I am also a lesbian) lie about who we are rather than examine the beliefs that led to the idea that we are sinning just by being. We are concerned that many of us (LGBTQ and their parents/siblings) leave the faith and some have PTSD symptoms from doing so. It’s a poison that we hope to draw out from The Church that we still try to love.
Liz, thank you so much for this!!
Reblogged this on Macjoyful's Minimal Musings and commented:
A response to Franklin Graham’s “important message for LGBT people”.
Great letter Liz.
To me FG does not have a pastors heart, compassion he has arrogance that he is righteous and I’m glad you made the point that he will be held accountable for the death of spirit/ and actual physical death his words are responsible for.
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