Pat Robertson Says Non-Religious Children Should Be Beaten Until They Respect Christian Beliefs

In another example demonstrating that Pat Robertson believes in persecuting non-Christians and indoctrinating children, the televangelist openly suggested that parents should beat their kids until they respect Christian beliefs.

During yet another shameful episode of the 700 Club, which runs on Disney-owned channel ABC Family, Robertson received an email from a woman who claimed that her grandson disrespects their Christian faith when they visit their daughter on Christmas and chose not to visit this past year.

“We declined going to our daughter’s house on Christmas this year because there is always an argument, hard feelings etc.,” viewer Karen wrote.

“One grandchild comes high on marijuana, cursing and challenging our faith. I correct him and have told my daughter to ask him to respect our beliefs, but he keeps it up. Our daughter say she is a Christian but will drink too much and offend her daughter and her husband. Were we wrong to not to attend another Christmas that leaves us upset or someone angry? I have shared my beliefs many times with them and am ridiculed by this grandson and son-in-law.”

Robertson’s immediate solution? Beat the child until he respects Christianity.

“Somebody take that kid to the woodshed and let him understand the blessings of discipline,” Robertson advised before predicting that the kid would end up in prison if a strong male figure didn’t start beating him right away.

“He needs a strong male figure. He’s going to wind up in a correctional institution, and the next thing you know, he’s going to be doing hard time in some prison. And then he would wish he wasn’t such a smart, you know, wise guy. Because he’ll be disciplined in a way that he’ll never forget in some prison… He needs discipline in the worst possible way.”

Here’s the video via YouTube.

One solution Pat Robertson conveniently didn’t mention is for Karen to stop bringing up religion at her daughter’s home. She says she has “shared her beliefs many times with them” and admits that it always causes an argument. Well, there’s her problem. Stop trying to force your beliefs upon your daughter’s family and the arguments will probably cease. It’s not that people are offended by someone just because they practice a certain religion, they just tend to get offended when someone tries to force those beliefs onto them. By doing this, Karen is inviting arguments, hard feelings, and ridicule from family members who don’t want to be preached to during a holiday or any other day of the year for that matter.

Robertson’s solution is not only cruel, it constitutes child abuse, which is against the law. Beating a child into respecting a religious belief is the very definition of indoctrination and violates the constitutional rights of the abused.

Robertson’s call for beating kids into religious submission is similar to a Glenn Beck rant from 2013 when he also advocated for parents to physically abuse their kids until they believe in God. Just two years earlier, fundamentalist Christian parents beat their nine kids in the name of God. One child actually died from the abuse. Telling religious extremists to beat their kids is a very dangerous thing to do, and if any religious parents beat their kids like Robertson is advising, he should be charged as an accessory to child abuse.

Pat Robertson’s Biggest Prophecy Flops

Now that 2014 is coming to an end, it’s time to take a quick look back to see how many predictions made by the right wing’s most infamous false prophet, Pat Robertson, actually came true.

Every year about this time, right wing nut job Pat Robertson (host of the 700 Club) goes up into the mountains alone, supposedly to communicate with God. And every year, after he comes down from the mountain, Robertson goes on live television to tell his viewers what God supposedly told him is going to happen in the year to come.

And every year, rain or shine or sleet or snow, Robertson’s ‘prophetic visions’ fail to come true.

Here’s a video of Robertson, making his predictions for 2014, courtesy of Right Wing Watch Blog:

Watching Robertson make his 2014 predictions was a lot like watching a ‘psychic mind-reader’ hard at work scamming an audience out of their wallets and wristwatches. Much of what he ‘predicted’ last year was so generic that it can’t be debunked or called out.

In case you couldn’t stomach watching the video, before Robertson started telling us what God supposedly told him that he was going to do in 2014, he says “Check it out when the year’s over, was I right or was I wrong?”

Pat Robertson Tries To Keep Former VA Gov. Bob McDonnell Out Of Prison

Via the Associated Press: 

Former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell should perform community service rather than serve prison time for his federal corruption convictions, an international relief organization said Tuesday. Operation Blessing International said it offered McDonnell jobs heading its hunger relief program in Appalachia or working at its orphanage and fish farm in Haiti if U.S. District Judge James Spencer agrees to spare McDonnell prison time. 

"As with his volunteering during Hurricane Katrina, Bob has shown an authentic willingness to serve others no matter how difficult the task," group president Bill Horan said in a statement. "We believe that we can leverage his energy and expertise to better serve those in need." 

Operation Blessing spokesman Chris Roslan said the organization collaborated with defense attorneys ahead of Tuesday's deadline for lawyers to file sentencing recommendations. Virginia Beach-based Operation Blessing was founded by religious broadcaster Pat Robertson. McDonnell is a graduate of Robertson's Regent University law school.

McDonnell is due for sentencing early next month. Operation Blessing, of course, has long been saddled with accusations of fraudulent practices.

Pat Robertson Calls For Establishing Biblical Law As The Law Of The Land

Pat Robertson is openly calling for replacing the Constitution with the Bible as the law of the land.

In the Constitution, you will not find any reference to the Bible whatsoever. No mention of Jesus, God, the disciples, prophets, Satan, angels, demons, Christianity, or even of the book itself. The only mention of religion in the document states that we the people have the freedom to practice whatever religion we choose and prohibits the government from establishing a state sponsored religion.

For over 220 years, the Constitution had been the foundation of our government and legal system. But ever since the Constitution became the law of the land, religious fundamentalists have tried time and time again to shred it in favor of biblical law. In the last 70 years alone, conservative “Christians” have made every effort to turn America from a religiously neutral nation of laws into a theocracy.

They have never been closer to achieving their dangerous and destructive goal than they are at this moment. And now Pat Robertson is openly calling for replacing the Constitution with the Bible.

During his 700 Club program on Monday, Robertson claimed that freedom will be lost if Americans don’t accept biblical law right now. He also claimed that biblical law has always been the foundation of the United States.

“This country was raised as honoring the Bible, how far have we come now where we have allowed a few atheists to destroy the very foundations of our culture and we’re in danger of losing all of our freedom because our freedom rests, ladies and gentlemen, rests on the word of God,” Robertson said.

Robertson said God is why we have rights and why we have justice and that now accepting the Bible as the law would amount to giving up our freedom and guaranteeing injustice. He then claimed America would transform into a brutal dictatorship unless we trash the Constitution and surrender to biblical law.

“You take away the Bible and you have the Nazis and you have the Communists and you have the dictators and you have evil rampant. America is still a Christian country but is far, far, far away from where it used to be,” Robertson concluded.

Here’s the video via Right Wing Watch:

Pat Robertson: Gays 'Will Die Out Because They Don't Reproduce'

On “The 700 Club” last week, Pat Robertson took a question from a viewer who said she attends a church whose members aren’t allowed to date, leaving many church members “frustrated because we’re getting older and no one is getting married.”

Robertson found this to be absolutely ridiculous because a church with a no-dating policy will eventually “die out”… just like gay people.

“You know, those who are homosexual will die out because they don’t reproduce,” he said. “You know, you have to have heterosexual sex to reproduce. Same thing with that church, it’s doomed, it’s going to die out because it’s the most nonsensical thing I’ve heard in a long time.” 

Pat Robertson Is A Fan Of Bobby Jindal: 'Wouldn't It Be Great If We Had A President Who Was A Former Hindu From India?'

“The 700 Club” ran a puff piece on Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal today, and color Pat Robertson impressed.

“Some interesting politicians are out there and they’ve got a couple who have Indian backgrounds,” an astonished Robertson said to introduce the segment.

After running an interview in which Jindal played well to the Christian Broadcasting Network audience by saying that the “greatest threat to America comes from within” including an “assault on religious liberty," Robertson said, “what an amazing man.”

“He has gone far and will go farther, no question about it. Wouldn’t it be great if we had a president who was a former Hindu from India? What a great story.”

Jindal was born in Louisiana.

In any case, Jindal might want to be wary of winning Robertson's praises, as the televangelist previously claimed that God told him Mitt Romney would win the 2012 presidential election.

Christian Fundamentalists Turn Their Backs On Pat Robertson For Having A Moment Of Sanity (VIDEO)

Pat Robertson is considered one of the evangelists responsible for the rise of Christian right-wing fundamentalism. In fact, Robertson is so far to the right that even Barry Goldwater hated him. For decades, when it came to Christian extremism, nobody beat Pat Robertson. He’s been a leader of a movement that now threatens the Constitution and our system of government with religious tyranny. But now, Robertson is getting a taste of his own medicine.

Remember when Pat Robertson admitted that Earth is older than 6,000 years?

The civil war between conservatives seems to now be raging within the Christian Right. And 700 Club host Pat Robertson is the first to be attacked as not Christian enough. It all goes back to November 2012 when Robertson dismissed the notion that Earth is only 6,000 years old. In a rare moment of sanity, Robertson told a female viewer that dinosaurs pre-date humans and that she should not deny science.

“You go back in time, you’ve got radiocarbon dating. You got all these things and you’ve got the carcasses of dinosaurs frozen in time out in the Dakotas… There was a time when these giant reptiles were on the Earth and it was before the time of the Bible. So, don’t try and cover it up and make like everything was 6,000 years. That’s not the Bible.”

Robertson was directly criticizing an estimated age of Earth that was claimed by Archbishop James Ussher around 400 years ago. Creationist’s have used this claim as the basis for their denial of the planet being billions of years old ever since.

Creationist Christian extremists attacked Pat Robertson for stating a fact.

This sane moment from Robertson, a college educated man, is precisely what drove creationist Christians to attack Robertson this week. ‘Creation Today’ hosts Eric Hovind and Paul Taylor criticized Robertson for not believing as they do and questioned the televangelist’s loyalty to the Bible.

“Of course the Bible does cover dinosaurs,” Taylor declared. “We have talked about that on this show several times.”

Taylor continued to assault Robertson:

“Pat Robertson is claiming, then, that 6,000 years comes from Ussher’s book and not the Bible. The point is, where did Ussher get his figure of 6,000 years? Now, then, Pat Robertson, are you claiming the Bible is not [divinely] inspired when the Bible clearly tells us that the world is 6,000 years old?”

Here’s the video via Creation Today.

Science proves that the Earth is billions of years old.

As much as it pains me to defend Pat Robertson, I’ll gladly do so this time. The fact is, nowhere in the Bible does it say how old Earth is. Creationists believe it is 6,000 years old because of a calculation written in the book of an Archbishop who was a fallible human being like the rest of us. In reality, Earth is approximately 4.5 billion years old. We know this because of radiometric dating, which is used to measure radioactive decay in materials such as rocks. As it turns out, when this test was used on zircon crystals in Australia, it was discovered the oldest minerals on the planet. Furthermore, when minerals from meteorites were tested, that material turned out to be 4.5 billion years old. In short, Robertson is right about Earth NOT being 6,000 years old. He also right about dinosaurs not roaming the Earth with humans. Science has proven that dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago, long before the first humans arrived.

Pat Robertson just learned that karma is a real b****.

Even though Robertson is correct, it is hilarious that Christian extremists are turning their backs on him. For decades, Robertson has made a career out of attacking people for not believing as he does and now the tables have turned. It’s rare to see Christian extremists attack one of their own. But this is a perfect example of how conservatives are willing to eat their own for defending facts. It is simply amazing how one moment of sanity caused conservative Christian heads to explode. At this moment, a civil war is raging between Republicans and the Tea Party. Now, it looks like a war is brewing between members of the Christian Right as well. And that should make every sane American smile with glee.

Pat Robertson loses battle to bury “secret AIDS ring” video

People For the American Way (PFAW) has been in a two-week battle with religious right leader, and former GOP presidential candidate, Pat Robertson over the existence of secret AIDS rings.
The battle is specifically over a video of a segment on Robertson’s daily TV show in which the always-inventive family values leader claimed that gays have secret rings that they use to infect straight people with AIDS.

The sneaky gays, you see, go to shake your hand, and then use their secret ring, which has an AIDS-infected needle surreptitiously attached to it, to prick your hand and give you HIV.
We are nothing if not inventive.

PAT ROBERTSON: You know what they do in San Francisco, some in the gay community, they want to get people, so if they got the stuff, they’ll have a ring, you shake hands, the ring’s got a little thing where you cut your finger.
DITZY SIDEKICK: Really?
PAT ROBERTSON: Yeah, really. I mean, it’s that kind of vicious stuff that should be the equivalent of murder.
DITZY SIDEKICK (breathlessly): Yeah.

People for got the video and posted it online (see below).  As People For notes, Robertson went to quite some lengths to try to suppress the damning video:

CBN not only had the video we posted of Robertson’s comments removed from YouTube by complaining that it violated copyright laws, but also edited the comments out of its own broadcast of the show.

We reposted our video elsewhere, but CBN also had it removed from websites such as Vimeo and Dailymotion.

We filed a counterclaim with YouTube asserting that our video was protected by Fair Use and yesterday we finally received word that our video had been restored.

But the episode reveals the lengths CBN will go to hide and censor the statements made by its own leader. Now, the network is even considering legal action against a documentary critical of Robertson.

Pat Robertson Threatens Legal Action Against Filmmakers For Exposing Charity Scam

Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network is already weighing legal action against two filmmakers over their documentary depicting the televangelist’s egregious misrepresentations of the activities of his charity, Operation Blessing.

An Operation Blessing spokesman told The Virginian-Pilot that they are “considering legal action” against Lara Zizic and David Turner, whose film “Mission Congo” will hold its premier at the Toronto International Film Festival, over the film’s supposed “false and defamatory” content.

CBN has a history of going after Robertson’s critics; for example, they recently embarked on an unsuccessful push to cover up a video of Robertson arguing that gay men wear special rings that they use to infect random people they meet with HIV/AIDS.

Chris McGreal of The Guardian reports that the film depicts how Robertson diverted charitable activities to help mining projects that he owned and grossly exaggerated the work of Operation Blessing among Rwandan refugees.

The bulk of the thousands of doctors and nurses struggling to save lives – as about 40,000 people died of cholera – were volunteers for the international medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). The Bible readers were hired by the American televangelist and former religious right presidential candidate, Pat Robertson, and his aid organisation, Operation Blessing International.

But on Robertson's US television station, the Christian Broadcasting Network, that reality was reversed, as he raised millions of dollars from loyal followers by claiming Operation Blessing was at the forefront of the international response to the biggest refugee crisis of the decade. It's a claim he continues to make, even though an official investigation into Robertson's operation in Virginia accused him of "fraudulent and deceptive" claims when he was running an almost non-existent aid operation.
…

Mission Congo, by David Turner and Lara Zizic, opens at the Toronto film festival on Friday. It describes how claims about the scale of aid to Rwandan refugees were among a number of exaggerated or false assertions about the activities of Operation Blessing which pulls in hundreds of millions of dollars a year in donations, much of it through Robertson's televangelism. They include characterising a failed large-scale farming project as a huge success, and claims about providing schools and other infrastructure.

But some of the most damaging criticism of Robertson comes from former aid workers at Operation Blessing, who describe how mercy flights to save refugees were diverted hundreds of miles from the crisis to deliver equipment to a diamond mining concession run by the televangelist.

…

The documentary describes how dredges, used to suck up diamonds from river beds, were delivered hundreds of miles from the crisis in Goma to a private commercial firm, African Development Company, registered in Bermuda and wholly owned by Robertson. ADC held a mining concession near the town of Kamonia on the far side of the country

…

The pilot said he joined Operation Blessing to help people. Of the 40 flights he flew into Congo, just two delivered aid. The others were associated with the diamond mining. "We're not doing anything for those people," he said. "After several months I was embarrassed to have Operation Blessing on the airplane's tail." He had the lettering removed.
…

Robertson's activities in Congo were initially exposed by a Virginia newspaper, the Virginian Pilot, in the 1990s. The investigation by Bill Sizemore prompted the attorney general in Virginia, where Operation Blessing is registered, to order a probe by the state's office of consumer affairs.

Its report concluded that Robertson made "fraudulent and deceptive" statements with claims to be ferrying doctors and medical aid to Goma when he was delivering diamond-mining equipment. It accused Operation Blessing of "misrepresenting" what its flights were doing, and of saying that the airstrip at Kamonia was part of the aid operation when it was "for the benefit of ADC's mining operation".

It also said Robertson had falsely portrayed the Dumi farm as hugely successful when it had already failed.

"Pat Robertson made material claims, via television appeals, regarding the relief efforts. These statements are refuted by the evidence in this case," the report said.
…

Robertson has been embroiled in mining controversies elsewhere in Africa. He supported the then president of Liberia, Charles Taylor, during that country's civil war without revealing at the time that he had an $8m investment in a Liberian gold mine. Taylor was already indicted by a UN war crimes tribunal at the time and was later convicted of crimes against humanity.

Your turn to talk back to Pat Robertson

Just before we took off for Labor Day, but after Pat Robertson accused gay men in San Francisco of wearing rings to cut and infect unsuspecting people with AIDS, I wondered if prominent Christians would ever tell the insufferable bigot to stuff it. They are. And more need to join them.

Rev. Susan Russell, an Episcopal priest from California and a past-president of Integrity USA, directly took me up on my challenge in a blog post on Monday. “Good people of deep faith can and do read the Bible and come to a variety of conclusions on a variety of issues,” Russell wrote on the Huffington Post. “But when the Pat Robertsons among us step over the line from respectful disagreement to incendiary diatribe — projecting onto God their own sexism, homophobia and ignorance — if we don’t speak out in rebuttal then shame on us.” She added later, “[W]e abdicate our responsibility as witnesses to God’s inclusive love every time we don’t stand up, speak up and offer an alternative to the toxic perversion of the core Christian values of love, justice and compassion.”

Then on Wednesday, the NALT Christians Project was launched by John Shore, Wayne Besen and Evan Hurst. NALT stands for “not all like that” and was taken from a phrase adopted by columnist Dan Savage. He explains in a video on the site that progressive Christians appalled by the hatred anti-gay hatred spewed by their more vocal brethren would often say to him that they are “not all like that.” So, Savage nicknamed them “NALT Christians.” And now they have a place to go to make their views and support known.

Right now, there are 20 videos at notalllikethat.org. One from the Rev. Dr. Louis Shockley, senior pastor of the Asbury United Methodist Church here in Washington, was especially resonant considering the inappropriate eulogy I sat through last month. “The role and the mission of the church of Jesus Christ is to expand the opportunity for all of God’s children to be embraced and embodied by the love, the grace and the mercy of the Holy Spirit,” he says directly into the camera. “So we like to believe that our mission here is to love all of God’s children, without exception, without distinction and without any type of segregation or movement that alienates.”

In the same way the gay community and allies rallied around the It Gets Better Project (another Savage innovation) to help lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender youth endure the bullying they suffer, NALT Christians must rally around this new endeavor. The Pat Robertsons of the world will continue to control the conversation until they are drowned out by those who embody the true meaning of God’s love.

Pat Robertson: Gays Wear Special Rings to Cut People and Intentionally Spread AIDS

On The 700 Club today, Pat Robertson claimed that gay people in San Francisco wear special rings in order to cut people so they can then intentionally infect them with AIDS when they shake hands.

CBN edited Robertson's claim out of the broadcast which it aired online, Right Wing Watch reports.

Robertson's claim came in a response to a viewer question from "a woman who wondered if it was wrong for the church not to inform her that a man she was driving to worship services is 'dying of AIDS,.'"

Said Robertson:

“There are laws now, I think the homosexual community has put these draconian laws on the books that prohibit people from discussing this particular affliction, you can tell somebody you had a heart attack, you can tell them they’ve got high blood pressure, but you can’t tell anybody you’ve got AIDS...

...You know what they do in San Francisco, some in the gay community there they want to get people so if they got the stuff they’ll have a ring, you shake hands, and the ring’s got a little thing where you cut your finger. Really. It’s that kind of vicious stuff, which would be the equivalent of murder."

You Won’t Believe Who Pat Robertson Blames for Tornadoes

If we’ve learned anything from the last 30 years or so of televangelism, God is responsible for nothing. The responsibility for all of the world’s tragedies lie squarely in the laps of gays, non-Christians, people who have sex, abortion, feminism and birth control. But what happens if a tragedy strikes at the geographical heart of evangelical Christianity?

On Monday night, a horrific tornado, measuring as much as a two miles wide and 22 miles long, devastated a suburb of Oklahoma City, OK. Its wreckage imagines the worst of war-torn countries. At this point, 15 adults and nine children have been confirmed dead.

While Americans are setting aside party politics and lending a hand where a hand is needed, televangelist, Pat Robertson, has consistently done what he does best – point fingers.

A couple of years ago when asked why God lets tornado happen, Robertson’s answer was that God created weather patterns (or something like that) and that the blame should be placed on the people that chose to live in the weather’s way. If only there was a follow-up question asking where, exactly, people were immune from weather and natural disasters. He also said that Jesus would have stopped the tornado if only people had prayed enough.

 “If enough people were praying He would’ve intervened, you could pray, Jesus stilled the storm, you can still storms.”

Here’s the video: