Dietsche said that the attitude of Samaritan's Purse (about homosexuality) was a key reason the plan to set up a field hospital inside the Cathedral of St. John the Divine was shelved last month, because as the New York Times put it, "The Bishop said that Mr. Graham espouses 'an exclusionary view and a very narrow view of what constitutes being a Christian.'"

"Critics have included members of the Episcopal clergy whose objections to the group's position on gay issues and non-Christian faiths helped scrap a proposed field hospital inside the cathedral of St. John the Divine."

Mr. Graham does not embrace homosexuality because it violates Scripture. He believes in marriage between a man and a woman. How vulgar and exclusionary of him when you think that most of the world still embraces heterosexual marriage. Samaritan's Purse requires that employees and volunteers sign a statement of faith affirming their belief in Jesus Christ and their view that 'marriage is exclusively the union of one genetic male and one genetic female.'

Now Mr. Graham said his ministry served all sufferers who might have COVID-19 regardless of sexual orientation, but that did not please Dietsche, who threw him out of the cathedral lock, stock and barrel.

Graham and the Samaritan's Purse was found guilty of being an evangelical Christian ministry that takes the Bible seriously, and for that he and they must be punished with the "doctrine" of exclusion.

The much ballyhooed "doctrine" of inclusion and diversity embedded in the canons of the Episcopal Church whose Presiding Bishop talks endlessly about love, got broadsided by one of his bishops who just happens to have a lesbian for an assistant bishop in the person of Mary Glasspool.

"Now, one could never accuse the Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of New York of holding to a narrow view of what constitutes being a Christian. You actually would be hard pressed to come up with any actual definition that the Diocese of New York would adopt about what it means to be a Christian other than something that is so generic that it would include non-Christians," wrote Southern Baptist theologian Al Mohler.

President Donald Trump had asked Graham to help out with the raging COVID-19 pandemic and Graham immediately stepped into help. After being tossed out of the cathedral, he set up shop near Central Park, where Samaritan's Purse helped all comers suffering from the Coronavirus. No one asked anyone about their sexual orientation.

Now, again, Samaritan's purse and Mount Sinai Medical Center and the Mayor of New York eventually made very clear there was no discrimination. There was no actual intention of discrimination, far from it when it came to medical treatment, but that's not enough and that's not really the ground of offense. Speaking of Franklin Graham, the New York Times said that he had said that Samaritan's Purse had never denied care to anyone because of a difference of belief overseas or in New York. Then listen to this: "But some New Yorkers have been skeptical. The organization's slogan, 'helping in Jesus' name,' was on trucks outside the field hospital and Mr. Graham delivered an Easter sermon on Fox News from the site."

But the revolutionary guards of the LGBTQ left, known for their hatred of all things orthodox, immediately took Umbridge. Cory Johnson of the New York City Council, roared, "This group, which is led by the notoriously bigoted hate spewing, Franklin Graham, came at a time when our city couldn't in good conscience turn away any offer of help. That time has passed. Their continued presence here is an affront to our values of inclusion and is painful for all New Yorkers who care deeply about the LGBTQ community."

The Gaystapo will not be restrained or contained. Resistance is useless. One headline ran, "Helping in Jesus' Name" Now Intolerable in New York City. Indeed, it is. Never mind that my brother-in law died of AIDS because he ventured into bath houses (now closed) and for his sin, died. His obituary from the LGBTQ movement was either the church was to blame or hatred from evangelicals like Graham. It was and remains a LIE. (It is now being foisted on the Church of England by the 'dyke of despair' Jayne Ozanne.)

A report by Yonat Shimron at Religion News Service said that by the time the speaker of the New York City Council made that statement, the field hospital's medical staff had treated 191 patients. That meant 191 patients who were not out on the street, and 191 patients who were not left in their homes, and 191 patients who were not forced into the already overrun New York City hospitals. That's the very reason why Mount Sinai Medical Center turned to Samaritan's Purse to erect an emergency field hospital.

Liam Stack and Sheri Fink, reporting for the New York Times wrote this: "The last patients have been discharged from the Central Park Field Hospital run by Samaritan's Purse, the evangelical organization led by the Reverend Franklin Graham. Its white tents will soon be dismantled and sent to new makeshift coronavirus wards as far away as Ecuador and Alaska."

Sadly, when this story first erupted, not a word was heard from any of the two remaining evangelical bishops in TEC, Bishop Greg Brewer of Central Florida or the Bishop of Dallas George Sumner in support of Graham and Samaritan's Purse. Silence is consent.

One hopes that the Alaskans receive the ministry of Graham with more generosity than the treatment he got at the hands of Dietsche and his diocesan cathedral staff who are more concerned with preserving sexual sin and taking the side of the Jew in the parable than that of the Good Samaritan.

END