ASHEVILLE – Facebook has apologized for temporarily banning North Carolina evangelist Franklin Graham from its platform over a 2016 post about the state’s “bathroom bill.”
The Asheville Citizen Times reports Facebook apologized to Graham on Sunday. Graham, the son of the late Rev. Billy Graham, said last week that platform banned him for 24 hours in December, saying the post violated community hate speech standards.
Graham said the post focused on the now-repealed House Bill 2, which required transgender people to often use restrooms matching their birth certificates.
Graham said his post was about Bruce Springsteen canceling a concert over the bill and “backward progress.” Graham said in the post that “a nation embracing sin and bowing at the feet of godless secularism and political correctness is not progress.”
“There was a character in a movie a few years back who said, ‘The truth is what I say it is!'” Graham said in a Dec. 28 post, according to the newspaper. “That’s what Facebook is trying to do. They’re making the rules and changing the rules.”
In an email to the Citizen Times, Facebook spokeswoman Sarah Pollack said a page administrator for Graham’s page received a “24-hour feature block after we removed a post for violating our hate speech policies.”
“Upon re-reviewing this content, we identified that the post does not violate our hate speech policy and has been restored,” Pollack said, according to the newspaper.
