XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh   
   From: zed@is.dead   
      
   Pat Robertson, Televangelist Who Blamed Gay People for 9/11 and Hurricanes,   
   Dies   
      
   The conspiratorial hatemonger who founded the Christian Broadcasting   
   Network helped usher Christian-conservatism into the mainstream   
   June 8, 2023   
      
      
      
   Pat Robertson, the televangelist who ran for the Republican presidential   
   nomination in 1988, died on Thursday at age 93. The Christian Broadcasting   
   Network, which Robertson founded in 1960, announced the news Thursday   
   morning.   
      
   Robertson is widely credited with ushering Christian-conservatism into   
   mainstream politics in the 1980s and 1990s, and laying the groundwork for   
   the modern right-wing culture war. He has a history of extreme, bigoted   
   commentary — including that gay people and abortion caused 9/11, that   
   Haitians deserved the 2010 earthquake that ravaged the island nation, and   
   that feminists are evil.   
      
   The 700 Club, Robertson’s long-running program on the CBN, was his most   
   common platform for hate. In the days after 9/11, he brought on pastor   
   Jerry Falwell to discuss the tragedy. “I really believe that the pagans,   
   and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who   
   are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People   
   for the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America, I   
   point the finger in their face and say, ‘You helped this happen,'” Falwell   
   said, to which Robertson said “I totally concur” and that the “agenda” has   
   been adopted by the “highest levels of our government.”   
      
      
   Robertson’s bigotry toward gay people was boundless. He said on The 700   
   Club that he wished Facebook had a “vomit button” for when he came across a   
   picture of gay people kissing, equated gay people with Nazis and Satanists,   
   and suggested God unleashed hurricanes and other natural disasters as   
   punishment for homosexuality. “I would warn Orlando that you’re right in   
   the way of some serious hurricanes, and I don’t think I’d be waving those   
   flags in God’s face if I were you,” he said of Disney World’s Gay Days.   
   “It’ll bring about terrorist bombs; it’ll bring earthquakes, tornadoes, and   
   possibly a meteor.”   
      
   Robertson was very much an active participant in the modern, far-right   
   Christian conservatism he helped create. He supported Donald Trump in 2016   
   and 2020, and described those trying to stop him from doing so as   
   “revolting against what God’s plan is for America.” After a gunman killed   
   60 people in Las Vegas in 2017, Robertson blamed “disrespect” for Trump.   
   Robertson broke from the former president after the 2020 election, however,   
   saying Trump needed to “move on” from the loss and that it would be “a   
   mistake” for him to run again in 2024.   
       	    	    	    	   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)