The anti-LGBTQ+ clergy who’ll be praying at Donald Trump’s inauguration

Author: Trudy Ring

Donald Trump’s inauguration as president Monday will include a lineup of anti-LGBTQ+ clergy members from a variety of faiths — Protestant, Catholic, Muslim, and Jewish.

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The invocation — opening prayer — will be delivered by the Rev. Franklin Graham, an evangelical Protestant, and Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of New York. Both are well known for their anti-LGBTQ+ views. The benediction, or closing prayer, will feature Rabbi Ari Berman, president of Yeshiva University; Imam Husham Al-Husainy of the Karbalaa Islamic Center in Dearborn, Mich.; Senior Pastor Lorenzo Sewell of 180 Church Detroit; and the Rev. Frank Mann, a retired priest in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn.

Graham, the son of the late evangelist Billy Graham, is a longtime Trump supporter who also delivered a prayer at his 2017 inauguration, as did Dolan. In 2021, Franklin Graham said celebrating LGBTQ+ Pride is like celebrating “lying, adultery, or murder.” He has praised Russia’s anti-LGBTQ+ laws, said marriage equality could lead God to punish the U.S., and condemned Pete Buttigieg for being an out and proud gay man.

Dolan is an outspoken opponent of marriage equality and has expressed discomfort with Pope Francis’s outreach to the LGBTQ+ community. Last year, when the funeral for transgender activist Cecilia Gentili was held at New York City’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral, he said attendees were irreverent and disrespectful. The service was cut short.

Those who’ll deliver the benediction are less well known, but some of them are markedly anti-LGBTQ+. Yeshiva University is affiliated with Orthodox Judaism, a branch of the Jewish faith that is not LGBTQ-accepting, unlike Conservative, Reform, and Reconstructionist Judaism. In 2022, it threatened to suspend all student clubs rather than recognize an LGBTQ+ club, the Pride Alliance, but backtracked after the Pride Alliance agreed to remain unrecognized. A court case brought by the Pride Alliance is ongoing.

Berman recently told Jewish News Service that it is an honor to speak at a presidential inauguration and that he intends to invoke “foundational biblical values.” Four years ago, he did condemn the Capitol insurrection by Trump supporters.

Eighty-seven percent of Yeshiva University students polled by the campus newspaper before the election said they intended to vote for Trump, with most saying the motivating factor was Trump’s support for Israel.

However, Trump won over some Muslim voters in Michigan who objected to the Biden administration’s aid to Israel in its war with Hamas. Michigan’s metro Detroit area, which includes Dearborn, has the largest concentration of Muslims in the U.S. But Al-Husainy expressed a different reason for backing Trump.

“I am supporting Donald Trump because he opposes gay marriage and he is the most Christian person in the election,” Al-Husainy told The Hillbefore the election. “He will return us to conservative values, and I am a Muslim, and I will stand with whoever opposes gay marriage.”

Actually, Trump has claimed he sees marriage equality as settled law, although some of his allies on the Supreme Court would like to see it undone. There are also many who would question how Christian he is, particularly as opposed to President Joe Biden, a practicing Catholic.

Trump has often spouted anti-Muslim rhetoric and, in his first term, imposed a ban on travel into the U.S. by residents of several largely Muslim countries. During the 2024 campaign, he pledged to reinstate the ban and said he would also bar refugees from Gaza, the region devastated by the Israel-Hamas war.

Al-Husainy came under fire by Fox News host Sean Hannity in 2007 because he refused to say Lebanon-based paramilitary organization Hezbollah is a terrorist group, even though it is designated so by the U.S. Conservatives objected to his presence at the Democratic National Committee’s winter meeting that year, where he delivered a prayer.

Detroit’s 180 Church, a largely Black Protestant congregation, appears to be anti-LGBTQ+. “God’s plan is that godly husbands and wives should produce godly children which they should raise in the fear and admonition of the Lord,” its website says. Sewell and another clergy member posted a video on Facebook before the election noting that Kamala Harris supports marriage equality and calling on the faithful to vote Republican because of “Christian values.” Sewell endorsed Trump, who made a campaign stop at his church last summer, but the event was lightly attended.

There’s not much record of Mann’s views, but the Roman Catholic Church, despite Pope Francis’s conciliatory attitude, still considers homosexuality a disorder and acting on it a sin, along with considering gender immutable and fixed at birth. The church does not perform same-sex marriages, although Francis has approved a blessing ceremony for same-sex couples but has said it’s a blessing of the people, not the relationship.

A rally Trump is holding Sunday, the day before the inauguration, will feature such anti-LGBTQ+ folks as musician Kid Rock, Turning Point’s Charlie Kirk, and of course Elon Musk. Also at the rally will be the Village People, who have distanced themselves from songs considered gay anthems. Country star Carrie Underwood will perform at the inauguration itself; she has said it is an honor to perform there even though she is a supporter of LGBTQ+ rights.

Original Article on The Advocate
Author: Trudy Ring