Evangelical leader Franklin Graham, the son of the late evangelist Billy Graham, was banned from posting on Facebook for 24 hours after a 2016 post of his was flagged for "dehumanizing language."

Following the ban Graham said in a Facebook post on Friday that the flagged statement, which was from April, was about North Carolina's "bathroom bill" that focused on which bathrooms transgender individuals were legally allowed to use.

He also shared the content of that flagged post, urging his followers to judge whether it contained hate speech. The post was critical of Bruce Springsteen canceling a North Carolina concert over the bill's existence.

"Bruce Springsteen, a long-time gay rights activist, has cancelled his North Carolina concert," Graham wrote. "He says the NC law #HB2 to prevent men from being able to use women's restrooms and locker rooms is going 'backwards instead of forwards.' Well, to be honest, we need to go back! Back to God. Back to respecting and honoring His commands. Back to common sense."

Facebook said the ban was made in error by Facebook's content review team, which has upward of 15,000 employees, and said that it was a mistake to take Graham's original post down.

“A page admin for Franklin Graham’s Facebook page did receive a 24-hour feature block after we removed a post for violating our hate speech policies," a Facebook spokesperson told the Washington Examiner. "Upon re-reviewing this content, we identified that the post does not violate our hate speech policy and has been restored.”

That didn't stop Graham from criticizing Facebook's "secret rulebook" on speech policing and accused Facebook of trying to "define truth."





"Why are they going back to 2016?" Graham asked during an appearance on Fox News. "I think it was just really a personal attack towards me. The problem with Facebook, if you disagree with their position on sexual orientation then you could be classified as hate speech, or that you’re a racist. This is a problem."

Graham also said that he accepted Facebook's apology and was appreciative that they apologized.