Televangelist Pat Robertson: COVID-19 is punishment for marriage equality

Robertson has mentioned the pandemic often on his show. In March, he claimed that having a healthy gut would protect people from getting ill.

“If your gut is healthy, you don’t have to worry about corona,” he said.

During that same show, he falsely said that, “people who have died so far are those who are already sick with something else,” despite evidence at the time showing the virus was affecting the healthy as well as those with pre-existing conditions.

Robertson has long expressed homophobic views and opposition to LGBTQ equality. In 2016, he responded to a shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando that left 49 people dead by saying, “The left is having a dilemma of major proportions, and I think for those of us who disagree with some of their policies, the best thing to do is to sit on the sidelines and let them kill themselves.”

He said in 1998, referring to an LGBTQ celebration at Walt Disney World, “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 … It’ll bring about terrorist bombs; it’ll bring earthquakes, tornadoes, and possibly a meteor.”

Other far-right Christians have joined Robertson in his assessment of the pandemic.

Franklin Graham, the son of the late evangelist Billy Graham and an unofficial spiritual adviser to Donald Trump, said that COVID-19 is the result of sin.

In an interview with Jeanine Pirro, Graham, who once said marriage equality “detestable before almighty God” recently said of COVID-19, “It’s because of the sin that’s in the world. Man has turned his back on God, we have sinned against him, and we need to ask for God’s forgiveness.”

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.