Billy Graham Protects Marriage

[Geee]

American Spectator:

It was may turn out to be one of his last great gifts to America, 93-year-old evangelist Billy Graham publicly endorsed North Carolina's marriage amendment shortly before the vote, helping guarantee its passage by a large margin.

"Watching the moral decline of our country causes me great concern," Graham said in ads that his ministry published in North Carolina newspapers. "I believe the home and marriage is the foundation of our society and must be protected."

"At 93, I never thought we would have to debate the definition of marriage," he deadpanned. "The Bible is clear -- God's definition of marriage is between a man and a woman. I want to urge my fellow North Carolinians to vote for the marriage amendment."

There had been some indications shortly before the May 7 vote that the margins of victory for Amendment One were narrowing. But in the end it received over 60 percent of the vote. As always, cultural elites were flummoxed. Same sex marriage is supposed to be inevitable, after all. They wonder: why won't voters just accept it and move on?

Graham, even in retirement, remains America's most revered religious figure. Now in the public eye for over 60 years, he is possibly America's most influential clergy ever. Who would rival him? Colonial New England's Puritan divines, culminating with Jonathan Edwards in the 1750s, deeply shaped America's religious conscience. Evangelists from George Whitefield to Francis Asbury to Charles Finney to Dwight Moody to Billy Sunday shaped America's populist religion from the late 1700s to the early 20th century. In the mid-20th century, Roman Catholic prelates like the media savvy Bishop Fulton Sheen brought their faith out of ethnic ghettoes and into the mainstream of American public life. Martin Luther King, across a tumultuous but relatively brief 15 years, became the chief icon of the civil rights movement.

But Graham has been an unavoidable public figure since 1949, in America, and around the world. He routinely filled stadiums before his retirement in 2007. With Queen Elizabeth, he is among the very few people who have personally known every U.S. president since Harry Truman. He was close friends to at least half a dozen of them, especially Nixon, Johnson, Reagan, and both Bushes. Graham has known Winston Churchill, Chiang Kai-shek, Konrad Adenauer, Haile Selassie, Indira Gandhi, and several popes, along with virtually every major public figure in American and Western public life of the last half century. He dealt with them as an equal, because his celebrity and following were typically as large as or larger than theirs. He led evangelicals to become America's largest religious demographic as part of a wider global evangelical revival involving hundreds of millions in the late 20th century and beyond.

[righteousmomma]

Franklin Graham called here (pre recorded) to ask us to vote for the amendment. Until then I was on the fence. NOT because

I am for same sex marriage but because of the wording in the Bill that I kept reading about. After a week of research etc it was hard to get a straight answer ( no pun intended). Scare tactics were in full swing. Clinton was coming to speak against the Amendment because it would take away spousal and child abuse protection, deny health coverage yada yada yada. Bill boards and yard signs proclaimed :"Protect all families. Vote against" and related bumper stickers like "I don't care for tea. I am for progress" . The so called handful of "the right" "pushing" for the Amendment and being castigated for taking away rights etc were quiet and did not mount a counter attack from what I heard. Then the Amenment not to change the definition of "marriage" as defined by The Creator passed with 60% of the vote. I say all this because it gives me hope for November. Do not believe many of the polls or the tweaks and twists written by mostly liberal journalists with an agenda.