In an effort to avoid businesses that ‘promote sin,’ Franklin Graham switched to BB&T – perhaps unaware it’s a sponsor of the Miami Beach gay pride parade

Leading the charge to boycott businesses “who promote sin” by advertising toward gay people, evangelical leader Franklin Graham has transferred millions of dollars out of one bank into another – perhaps unaware that his new bank has also sponsored LGBT events.

Franklin Graham, son of evangelical pastor Billy Graham and president of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, has called on Christians to “fight the tide of moral decay that is being crammed down our throats by big business, the media, and the gay [and] lesbian community”.

In a Facebook post, he urged his followers to boycott Tiffany’s for having advertised wedding rings for same-sex couples, as well as Wells Fargo, which recently aired a TV ad, which showed two gay women learning sign language to prepare for the adoption of a deaf daughter.

The Tiffany’s ad in question shows two gay men getting engaged.

“Let’s just stop doing business with those who promote sin and stand against almighty God’s laws,” Graham wrote in his announcement, adding that his organization would no longer work with either the bank or jeweler.

But the association’s new bank, North Carolina-based BB&T, is one of the sponsors of this year’s Miami Beach Gay Pride Parade, host of a Miami fundraiser for gay “legacy couples”, and has a high rating from the LGBT activists of Human Rights Campaign.

BB&T spokesperson Brian Davis said the bank “embraces diversity” and its clients “regardless of their race, gender, religion, sexual orientation or gender identity”, but added: “We do not take formal positions on non-banking or social issues.”

Davis said that the bank’s various sponsorships do “not imply endorsement” of any organizations social or political positions.

In a statement, Graham said the decision was about advertising “to promote lifestyles that are counter to what God’s word teaches” and “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,” he said. A public relations spokesperson who represents the association did not immediately respond to a question about whether Graham learned of BB&T’s sponsorships before or after the decision to transfer accounts.

The pastor told the Charlotte Observer: “There’s lots of businesses out there that do business with gay people. That’s fine.”

Unlike his father, a relative moderate and gentle orator, Franklin Graham has aggressively courted more solidly rightwing constituencies for more than a decade. In contrast, Billy Graham was friend and adviser to both Republican and Democratic presidents for decades, and a stalwart supporter of the civil rights movement, refusing to segregate his congregation.

A supporter of the US invasion of Iraq, the younger Graham in 2010 said that “true Islam cannot be practiced in this country” because “you can’t beat your wife, you cannot murder your children if you think they’ve committed adultery or something like that”.

That same year, he also said Barack Obama “was born a Muslim”. He eventually apologized for his remarks about the president, but has continued to vocally criticize Islam, even denouncing a Duke University call to prayer event intended to promote community and religious pluralism.

Alarmed by threats, the school first cancelled the call to prayer and then proceeded with a modified version.

As same-sex marriage has become increasingly legal in US states in recent years – legal only in two states in 2008 and now in 36, plus Washington DC and of disputed legality in Alabama – Graham has become more outspoken against marriage equality.

Last year, he praised Vladimir Putin and Russia’s laws against “gay propaganda”, writing: “Obviously, he may be wrong about many things, but he has taken a stand to protect his nation’s children from the damaging effects of any gay and lesbian agenda.”

In April, he also expressed his umbrage about The Iceman, a comic book character who would come out as gay, saying: “this is another attempt to indoctrinate our young people to accept this destructive lifestyle.”

Members of the Graham family have disagreed on how to handle the legacy of their pastor patriarch, who is 96. Graham is CEO of Samaritan’s Purse, an evangelical humanitarian organization that works around the world. Billy Graham poses problems for historians, too, who have struggled to reconcile his personal advocacy for the civil rights movement with his views toward women and what role he may have played in the emergence of a reactionary religious segments of the deep south.