Pat Robertson, Televangelist Who Said Gays Caused 9/11, Dead at 93

Pat Robertson, an evangelical preacher who helped shape the Republican party into the evangelical powerhouse it is today, has passed away at the age of 93.

Robertson began his career as a preacher and then founded the Christian Broadcasting Network in 1960 out of Virginia Beach, Virginia. He appeared regularly on his television network throughout his life.

Robertson started becoming more involved with politics as the years went on, working with Ronald Regan, George H.W. Bush, and other influential Republicans. Through his TV channel, preaching, and political work, he was one of the major influences in pushing the Republican party to the far right, especially on social issues.

Among many other controversies involving supposed “faith healing,” false predictions, and comments on Muslims and Hindus, Robertson was notorious for comments speaking out against the LGBTQ+ community and its members.

Robertson is responsible for the famous claim that feminism is a “socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism, and become lesbians.”

In 1998, he warned that if America accepted homosexuality, it would lead to hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes, terrorist bombings, and “possibly a meteor.”

He also agreed with fellow evangelical pastor and bigot Jerry Falwell when he claimed that the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 were caused by America being taken over by “pagans, abortionists, feminists, gays, lesbians, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the People For the American Way.”

In 2013, Robertson made claims that members of the San Francisco gay community had taken to wearing rings that were both sharp and infected with HIV so they could deliberately and secretly infect people. He also claimed that the gay community had “put laws on the books” prohibiting people from mentioning their HIV status.

His anti-gay comments continued when the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage with the Obergefell v. Hodges case in 2015. After the ruling, Robertson said that “you’re gonna say that you like anal sex, you like oral sex, you like bestiality.” He continued: “Sooner or later, you’re going to have to conform your religious beliefs to the group of some abhorrent thing. It won’t stop at homosexuality.”

He also claimed that many gay people become gay “because they’ve been abused by a parent, abused by a coach, abused by a sibling, abused by a friend, they’re little boys and little girls and they don’t know any better and then they somehow think, ‘well I must be gay,’ they aren’t they are heterosexual and they just need to come out of that.”

After the tragic shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando where 49 people were murdered and 53 more were wounded in a gay club by 29-year-old Omar Mateen, Robertson said “the best thing to do is sit on the sidelines and let [the LGBTQ+ community and Muslims] kill themselves.”

Hopefully for him, his God is a forgiving one.