Billy Graham mum
on same-sex marriage

After six decades of traveling the world to preach the gospel, 86-year-old evangelist Billy Graham is ready for at least one more revival meeting, in New York City next week. The event was moved from Madison Square Garden to Flushing Meadows Corona Park to accommodate expected big turnout. Graham seems all but certain that it will be his last mass event in the United States and probably the last anywhere. "In my mind, it is," he said during an Associated Press interview at a Long Island hotel where he's resting up for the event. "I wouldn't like to say 'never,"' the amiable evangelist added with a chuckle. "Never is a bad word." Even if there are no more mass meetings, Graham might still give occasional talks. But his pace has been slowed considerably by advancing age and infirmities. He spends most days at his mountainside home in Montreat, N.C., where wife Ruth is largely bedridden. Cautious even in his more active years, Graham now seeks to shun all public controversies, preferring a simple message of love and unity through Jesus Christ. Asked about same-sex marriage, for instance, Graham replied, "I don't give advice. I'm going to stay off these hot-button issues." Even when he occasionally speaks by phone with President Bush, the evangelist welcomed to the White House by every president since Truman doesn't chat to influence "but only to say I'm praying for him and to give him a verse of Scripture." (Richard N. Ostling, AP)