The financial institution that
Franklin Graham said he was moving the funds of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association to in protest of an advertisement featuring a lesbian couple sponsored by Wells Fargo Bank backed a gay-pride fundraiser in Miami earlier this year.
The bank, BB&T of Winston-Salem, N.C., sponsored a gay pride festival reception earlier in Miami Beach,
The Charlotte Observer reports. The reception honored the Legacy Couples program established during the first Miami Beach Gay Pride parade in 2009.
Legacy Couples are guests of the parade who have had committed relationships of 10 years or more, the Observer reports. A gay couple was married at the BB&T branch in South Beach during this year's event.
Brian Davis, a BB&T spokesman, declined to comment to
Forbes magazine on individual accounts, citing privacy concerns, or on any of the specific bank sponsorship. Most of those activities are handled locally or regionally he said.
Many churches and nonprofit groups hold BB&T accounts, Davis added.
However, BB&T Chief Corporate Communications Officer Cynthia Williams told Forbes that the company's sponsorships do not imply that the institution endorses any organization's political or social positions.
"We do not take formal positions on non-banking or social issues," Williams said.
Graham, the son of world-renowned evangelist Billy Graham and CEO of Samaritan's Purse, told the Family Research Council (FRC) on Monday that he would switch the association's accounts to BB&T.
He is also president and CEO of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, established in 1950 by his father.
Both Graham operations are based in Charlotte. Wells Fargo is headquartered in San Francisco.
"At the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, we're closing our accounts at Wells Fargo and we're moving it to another bank here in North Carolina, BB&T, that is a good bank," Graham told the FRC, the Observer reports. "We've done business with them at Samaritan's Purse for many years.
"And just a good, solid bank that's very good at banking," Graham said.
He later told Forbes in a statement: "The decision to move the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association's banking business away from Wells Fargo is based on the bank using corporate advertising to promote lifestyles that are counter to what God's Word teaches.
"This is not about a business being gay-friendly; it's about whether the business is using stockholder's money to promote a lifestyle that is not biblical."
Graham declined to comment on whether he would reverse his decision on BB&T in light of reports about their Miami sponsorship, Forbes reports.
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