One of Pat Robertson’s viewers, “Lillian,” wrote in to say that she’s at her wit’s end with her lesbian daughter. On Monday’s edition of “The 700 Club,” the Virginia Beach Ayatollah suggested that Lillian send her daughter to a Christian summer camp specializing in conversion therapy.
People for the American Way’s Right Wing Watch got a clip.
Robertson told Lillian that her daughter needed a lot of prayer so that God would “straighten her out.” However, he reassured Lillian that her daughter was just going through a “phase,” since she “doesn’t know what dress she’s supposed to wear, much less what kind of sex she’s supposed to be.” Gee–does that mean all girls who go through puberty may have lesbian thoughts? That’s news to me–and would probably be news to most of my lady friends as well.
Co-host Terry Meeuwsen got in on the act, saying there was “so much in our culture today” pushing kids into the LGBT culture. Robertson agreed, harrumphing about the “pressure” kids face to dabble in the gay culture–“lesbian this and lesbian the other.” He warned his audience that the mainstream media is pushing the gay lifestyle “as hard as they can possibly push it.” His advice to Lillian? She ought to find her daughter “a camp, a Christian summer camp” run by people “really on fire for the Lord.”
It says a lot about Robertson that he can still suggest a “pray away the gay” camp even in the face of overwhelming evidence that it does more harm than good. The federal Supreme Court gets it–it allowed California to ban the use of conversion therapy on minors. A New Jersey judge gets it–he actually declared that anyone who suggests homosexuality is a mental disorder is guilty of fraud.
But then again, consider that most of Robertson’s audience thinks that this “therapy” is actually an act of love. You also have to consider that this is coming from a guy who, for at least 16 years, told victims of sexual abuse and molestation that they could somehow “allow” their ordeals to happen. He also suggested that those who suspect an act of abuse has taken place go to a minister first before doing anything else. Anyone who followed that advice would be breaking the law in most of this country–undoubtedly why the paper was taken down in 2012. If Robertson thought something that hurtful would be even remotely acceptable in an age when people have become more aware of child abuse, it’s not too big a leap for him to make a full-throated defense of conversion therapy.
