Home Secretary urged to block homophobic and racist US preacher from visiting
Franklin Graham is planning to visit the UK for the Lancashire Festival of Hope
By Steve Brown
UK Home Secretary Sajid Javid has been urged to ban a visit from a US preacher claims gay people ‘steal children’.
Franklin Graham, the head of Christian charity Samaritan’s Purse, is planning to visit the UK this weekend to attend the Lancashire Festival of Hope in Blackpool.
However, many local figures have called for Graham’s visit to be blocked after the Trump supporter has a history of aligning himself with anti-LGBT people and continuous use of homophobic phrases.
While speaking to a crowd in Russia, Graham praised Vladimir Putin’s 2013 anti-gay propaganda law and said that homosexuals “take people’s children”.
He also made wild accusations that there had been a “moral 9/11” in America due to homosexuals and said the LGBT community are the “enemy” of civilisation.
Blackpool South MP Gordon Marsden shared a letter with the Blackpool Gazette and said: “I have had a number of constituents, including local clergy and other faith leaders, who were alarms and appalled by the derogatory and inflammatory views that Franklin Graham has expressed towards Muslims, members of the LGBT community and others.
“Blackpool welcomes every year millions of visitors of all faiths and none, as well as diverse families, members of the LGBT community and many different nationalities.
“Our residential community is similarly diverse. I’m therefore asking the Home Secretary to urgently consider stopping any further escalation of tension and hurt towards the groups he continues to attack in his preaching by barring his ability to speak at the Winter Gardens.”