Franklin Graham pointed to news of skyrocketing STD rates in the United States as evidence of our collective “moral and spiritual crisis.”
The series of tweets came in response to a CNN article reporting that a record number of STD cases, more than 2.3 million, were diagnosed in the United States in 2017. This was 200,000 more than the previous record, which was set in 2016.
David Harvey, the executive director of the National Coalition of STD directors, said that President Trump and Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar should declare this “a public health crisis.”
In the first of three tweets, Graham shared the link to the story, saying we had set another record, but that this one was carried no cause for celebration.
.@CDCgov announced yesterday that our nation has set another record, but it’s not one to celebrate. Last year nearly 2.3 million cases of sexually transmitted diseases were diagnosed in the U.S. That broke the record set in 2016 by nearly 200K cases. 1/3 https://t.co/Y1MO1uTvtc
— Franklin Graham (@Franklin_Graham) August 29, 2018
Then, he responded to Harvey’s call for President Trump to declare a public health crisis, saying that what we really have is a “moral and spiritual crisis.” He pointed to the rise in STDs as one symptom of the larger “crisis.”
An STD expert says that @POTUS should declare this a public health crisis. I believe what America has is a moral crisis and a spiritual crisis. And it manifests itself in many ways, including this public health crisis. 2/3
— Franklin Graham (@Franklin_Graham) August 29, 2018
In the final tweet, Graham expounded on his point about the moral and spiritual crisis, by saying that sin always carries a cost. He concluded by pointing to God’s grace and quoting 1 Corinthians 6:18. “God loves us and wants to protect us. His Word tells us what to do: ‘Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body.’”
Sin always has a cost, a consequence. God loves us and wants to protect us. His Word tells us what to do: “Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body” (1 Cor. 6:18). 3/3
— Franklin Graham (@Franklin_Graham) August 29, 2018
The top response to each of the tweets came from users pointing to the apparent incongruity between Graham’s call to sexual morality and his continuing support of President Trump, who once referred to sleeping with many women but not getting an STD “my personal Vietnam.”
Photo courtesy: Pexels/Pixabay
