During today’s episode of The 700 Club, televangelist Pat Robertson went full Christian bigot when he blamed COVID-19 on homosexuality. (The disease isn’t sexually transmitted, nor does it disproportionately affect people based on their sexual orientation.)

Of course, he didn’t say the virus appeared because of gay people. He used the more standard evangelical excuse that God is punishing us for our sins… like gay rights and abortion and being “anti-Israel.”

Robertson was prompted by a question about COVID-19 that said, “How can God heal our land and forgive the sins when abortion and same-sex marriage are laws and many people are anti-Israel? Doesn’t this prevent His healing and forgiveness?”

His response? Absolutely.

… You know the Bible says — turn from their wicked ways. They didn’t get forgiven. They will turn from their wicked ways. And part of what we’ve done is turn. We are not turning when we have done terrible things. We have broken the covenant that God made with the mankind. We have violated His covenant. We have taken the life of the innocent, slaughtered them by the tens of millions, children made in the image of God. And we have abused the poor. I mean, we’ve allowed this terrible plague to spread throughout our society. And it’s a small wonder God would hold us guilty. But the answer is, you know, you confess your sins and forsake them. Then He heals the land. It’s not before. You are right.

Somehow, his entire explanation of who’s to blame for the spread of the virus ignored the Republican Party’s utterly incompetent, anti-science response to the pandemic.

Robertson has long harbored anti-LGBTQ sentiments and once lamented the “organized thrust” of gay people who “stick it to the Christians.”

(via Media Matters)

