Franklin Graham has lashed out at a Texas school superintendent for promoting a course he says tries to brainwash kids to embrace gay and lesbian, bisexual and transgender lifestyles.
"I'm thankful for pastors in Houston who are standing up against the school superintendent as he is trying to push 'LGBTQ history' curriculum on students," Graham, president of the influential Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, said on his Facebook page.
"The Houston Area Pastor Council is exactly right — this curriculum is not about education, it is about indoctrination."
Last week, Richard Carranza, superintendent of the Houston Independent School District sparked a furor when he proposed adding LGBTQ studies to the district's existing U.S. history curriculum, The Houtson Chronicle reported.
"The LGBTQ movement in the U.S. has a history, and in many cases, many people would call it a civil rights history in terms of acceptance and in terms of who have been leaders of the movement," Carranza said at a community forum.
"I think it's part of the American history. To include that as part of what kids study is just a bigger picture of who we are as America."
That set off the Houston Area Pastor Council which quickly condemned the proposal for the nation's seventh largest school district.
"This is Houston, not San Francisco," the council's executive director, the Rev. Dave Welch, said in a statement, The Christian Post reported.
"The proposal by HISD Superintendent Richard Carranza to introduce California-style LGBTQ 'studies' into our children's U.S. History curriculum is not about education, it is about indoctrination."
In 2016, the California State Board of Education unanimously voted to add LGBTQ studies to schools' required history courses.
"Carranza is an import from San Francisco where this kind of propaganda that attempts to equate sexual lifestyles, gender confusion and hostility toward the traditional family has become the norm," Welch said.
He added the superintendent should be mindful that "this is Texas, where the people of all ethnicities still believe that our children are to be protected, nurtured and educated, not used as a social experiment of a radical political agenda."
Graham said the church has been a leader in standing up for traditional values embraced by "the moral majority."
"Bold pastors and churches were the ones who stood up against the Houston transgender bathroom ordinance in 2015 and won. We live in a day when we have to be on guard for the minds and hearts of our children and grandchildren at every turn," Graham said.
"It's time for churches, Christians, and people of all faiths who are the moral majority to stand up, be involved, and let their voice be heard."
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