Laura Ingraham invited the Rev. Franklin Graham on to her prime-time Fox News show to address controversy surrounding his homophobic nonprofit, which has set up an overflow hospital for COVID-19 patients. Graham is an infamous anti-LGBTQ bigot who recently said Pete Buttigieg should repent for being gay; despite this, he lied that he is “not homophobic” and “certainly not going around bashing people because they may be homosexual” during the segment.

Graham has long used his evangelical empire to oppose the rights and acceptance of the LGBTQ community, including asserting that pastors need to be willing to “get our heads chopped off” for saying that LGBTQ people are going to hell:

• In April 2019, Graham said that former presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg’s sexuality is “not something to be flaunted, praised or politicized” and that he should repent for being gay.

• Graham claimed in August 2019 that teaching LGBTQ history in schools is an “affront to God” and that “homosexuality goes against God’s plan for the human race.” He also called on parents to take their kids out of public schools in New Jersey, which has a law requiring the teaching of LGBTQ history.

• In 2016, Graham equated trans people to “pedophiles & sexual perverts” while defending North Carolina’s partially repealed discriminatory bathroom bill.

• That same year, Graham said that “gay children” are “the enemy” and must be stopped from “going to influence” the children of Christian parents.

• Graham claimed in 2014 that “none other than Satan himself” is behind the movement for LGBTQ rights.

• Also in 2014, Graham said that since “gays and lesbians cannot have children, biologically it’s impossible,” they instead have to “recruit children into [their] cause” through adoption.

• That same year, Graham defended Russia’s “gay propaganda” law, which “effectively legalizes discrimination based on sexual orientation” and led to an increase in homophobic rhetoric and violence in the country, according to Human Rights Watch. 

Graham’s medical nonprofit organization Samaritan’s Purse has set up a makeshift field hospital in Central Park to treat overflow coronavirus patients in order to ease New York City’s overwhelmed hospital system. The group has been criticized for forcing its workers and volunteers to adhere to an anti-LGBTQ statement of faith which denies the existence of trans people, defines marriage as “exclusively the union of one genetic male and one genetic female," and states that the “unrighteous” will be banished “to everlasting punishment in hell.” 

During the April 14 segment on Fox, Ingraham dubiously questioned criticisms of Samaritan’s Purse and gave Graham a platform to try to whitewash his bigoted past.

Samaritan’s Purse has long used humanitarian crises to spread Graham’s evangelical agenda. The New York Times reported that following the aftermath of two devastating 2001 earthquakes in El Salvador, the group “blurred the line between church and state as its volunteers preach, pray and seek converts among people desperate for help,” using hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal aid funding while holding “half-hour prayer meetings,” distributing religious tracts, and asking those receiving aid “to accept Jesus Christ as their savior.”