Ten Ways You Can Respond with Truth to Robertson's Rhetoric of Intolerance
Most Americans don't even know that the popular, G-rated Family Channel was founded by televangelist Pat Robertson and is run by his son, Tim, as a very profitable "outreach" of Pat's non-profit Christian Broadcasting Network. The Virginian-Pilot reported (Feb. 12) that Fox and other communication giants would pay as much as $1.2 billion to $1.4 billion for Pat's media empire that controls MTM Entertainment ("Hill Street Blues" to "The Mary Tyler Moore Show"), the Ice Capades, a chain of live-music theaters, TV programming in Asia, Latin America, and a British version of the Family Channel.
Carried by cable into approximately 70 million U.S. homes, Family Channel programming seems innocent enough with its steady diet of popular movies and TV series' reruns ("Three Stooges," "Waltons," "Highway to Heaven"), but three times every day a full hour of toxic waste flows into that polluted programming stream. Once in the morning and twice at night, the Family Channel repeats Pat's daily "700 Club" with its false and inflammatory attacks on lesbian and gay Americans.
On January 7, 1997, for example, Robertson claimed that the two biggest problems in America are "homosexuality and abortion." He caricatured people who support gay rights as a "malevolent force pushing this agenda that is perverse and evil."
For six years we have carefully monitored Robertson's anti-homosexual obsession. For two years we tried to meet with Pat privately, to help him understand how his campaign leads to discrimination, suffering and death for God's lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered children. When he refused to see us privately, we took our case against him to the public.
On Valentine's day, 1995, when we tried to visit Pat's office with flowers, candy, and our written case against him, I was arrested and held in punitive isolation in the Virginia Beach city jail for twenty-one days while I waited for a meeting with Pat. After spending a few minutes with me in a surprise, late night visit, he told his "700 Club" viewers "we abhor violence against homosexuals," but in the next twelve months Pat continued his anti-homosexual campaign that leads directly and indirectly to the very violence he "abhors."
That campaign continues today.
On February 14, 1996, when he refused to meet with us again, my partner, Gary Nixon, and I rented a hotel conference room across from his headquarters in Virginia Beach and invited the media to see a 30 minute tape we had prepared showing outrageous examples of his rhetoric and our response. In the last year, more than 2,000 copies of that video, "The Rhetoric of Intolerance," have been seen in individual homes, schools, libraries, churches, synagogues, P-FLAG meetings and on public access television to help people sample Pat's dangerous rhetoric and to prepare their own response.
Now, it's 1997, time again to present our annual Valentine to Pat. The 'soul force' principles of Jesus, Gandhi, and King are clear: We must continue to present the truth in love relentlessly until Robertson, millions of his TV followers, and the 1.7 million political activists in his Christian Coalition see the light.
Here's how you can send a Valentine to Pat and help end his tragic, "700 Club" anti-gay/lesbian campaign.
1. Find the Family Channel (FAM) in your TV guide and decide for yourself if you want to go on watching (and thus supporting) the channel that Pat uses in his attempts to turn the country against us. Remember, Pat's words were used against us on the floor of the U.S. House and Senate during the DOMA debate and they trickle down to help create the hostile climate that has found us among the primary victims of hate crimes all across America.
2. Warn families and friends (especially parents with children) that there are "700 Club" wolves hiding among the Family Channel sheep. Viewing Robertson's Family Channel can be dangerous to the mental health of children and adults alike. After listening to Pat and his staff caricature and condemn us, it's no wonder so many young lesbians and gays (especially those in religious homes) live in lonely closets of guilt and fear or even take their own lives.
3. Call your local cable operator and share your concern. You'll be amazed at how much impact one call can have on a local cable system. And if you ask enough of your friends to call, you might see the Family Channel disappear from your screen. If not, ask local cable management to view our "Rhetoric of Intolerance" video* and then broadcast it on a public access channel to give us an equal opportunity to respond to the false charges against us.
4. Watch the Family Channel just long enough to write down 2-3 of the regular sponsor's 800 numbers or home pages and call or e-mail your concern. Most sponsors don't know that their dollars help keep Pat Robertson's anti-homosexual campaign on the air. Tell Keebler, Lysol, Campbell's, Dr.School's, Hormel, Magnavox, Pillsbury, Jenny Craig, Jeep, Betty Crocker, Chrysler, Disney, Columbia, Von's, Heath Bar, etc. They need to know.
5. Share your honest concern directly with Pat at his CBN home page - http://www.cbn.org/ (Click on "Feedback") - or at his Family Channel home page - http://www.familychannel.com/ (Scroll to "Tell us what you think"). Then, tell them what you think in the spirit of Gandhi and King's soul force, "truth in love relentlessly."
6. Contact the Federal Communication's Commission with your concerns. The commissioners regulate public broadcasting and need to know how you feel about Robertson's anti-homosexual campaign: fccinfo@fcc.gov
7. If you know anyone, - producers, actors, directors, executives - at Fox, Disney, Universal, Columbia-Tristar, or the other film and TV production houses, remind them that doing business with Pat's Family Channel hurts us all.
8. If you want to stay informed about the dangerous words and actions of Pat Robertson, Ralph Reed, and their Christian Coalition, e-mail Paula X at Watch97@aol.com to get on her informative and 'undercover' CCWatch list.
9. Check regularly with our own JusticeNET home page for new information about Pat Robertson's Family Channel and how you can help silence the rhetoric. http://www.electriciti.com/~trey/melwhite/
10. Too many Americans have never seen the anti-homosexual extremists in action. Our "Rhetoric of Intolerance" video* includes 35 of Pat's most outrageous recent statements, (not just against lesbians and gays, but against "militant feminists," Muslim Americans and others on Pat's enemy list). Order a copy and use it with your friends and family, to see for themselves what the extremists are saying and how we can respond more effectively.
Remember, with all the gains we've made, our sisters and brothers are still being discarded by their families, evicted from them homes, fired from their jobs, excommunicated by their churches, hunted down and hounded out of the military, harassed, beaten and murdered by bullies simply because they're lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgendered.
Pat Robertson's Family Channel is a primary source of the false and inflammatory misinformation that leads to all this hatred against us. We can't sit by and refuse to confront the untruth when it leads to so much suffering. We must respond with truth in love relentlessly. Happy Valentine's day. Let love and truth prevail.
Mel White, UFMCC Justice Minister
*It's OK to make copies of our "Rhetoric of Intolerance" video and give them away, but if you don't have access to a copy already in circulation, send a check for $5.55 (to cover our costs for duplicating, packaging, and mailing the video and a User's Guide) to VIDEO, P.O. Box 4467, Laguna Beach, CA. 92652. This not-for-profit video has proven to be a powerful tool in shocking people awake and in preparing them to respond more effectively to the anti-homosexual misinformation when they are confronted by it.
Office: P.O. Box 4467, Laguna Beach, CA. 92652
Office Phone: 310-360-8640 Home Fax: 714-494-4079 E-mail: RevMel@aol.com
A letter to the Editor of the Chicago Tribune last month sounded all too dishonestly familiar.
It said, in part: "Like millions of others, Mr. [Pat] Robertson believes that homosexual behavior is morally wrong and violates the biblical principles fundamental to Christian belief. At the same time, however, that belief is balanced by the same love and compassion that Mr. Robertson has exhibited daily for 35 years through his international ministry. Mr. Robertson condemns violence aimed at anyone-- including homosexuals. He told his national TV audience, 'We abhor violence against homosexuals. We would counsel strongly in relation to homosexuality that you could hold your religious beliefs without beating people up and being violent.' "
That letter was written by Gene Kapp, Vice President for Public relations of Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network in Virginia Beach, Virginia -- in response to someone who had deigned to criticize "religious leaders like Pat Robertson, while at the same time distorting their deeply held religious beliefs about homosexuality."
Mr. Kapp, of course, left out a few very important facts.
Pat Robertson -- founder, president and boss of the Christian Coalition, by the way -- made that statement nearly two years ago! It was made under duress, as a way of ending a twenty-three day fast by MCC Minister of Justice and Reconciliation Mel White. Kapp was very much involved in that embarrassing incident and, like his boss, very happy when it was over. RING ANY BELLS, GENE?
We remember that two years ago, Dr. Mel White -- formerly Robertson's ghostwriter ("America's Date with Destiny") -- tried repeatedly to meet with Robertson to ask him to tone down the anti-homosexual pronouncements and programming on The 700 Club. To make a long story short, White finally showed up at Pat's doorstep in Virginia Beach on Valentine's Day and was arrested for trespassing. The MCC minister subsequently spent twenty-three days in jail, fasting and waiting for his former boss. When Robertson showed up for a brief jailhouse meeting, he agreed to renounce violence against homosexuals on The 700 Club. He did so -- per the above infamous statement -- on March 10, 1995.
A year later, absolutely nothing had changed. Mel White and others had monitored every single 700 Club broadcast and could prove that Pat Robertson's campaign against lesbian and gay Americans continued unabated. White wanted everybody to see for themselves. To that end he put together a brilliant 30-minute video* that both illustrates the toxic rhetoric and responds to it with forthright truth, Biblical documentation, and loving grace. He and his life-partner Gary Nixon went back to Virginia Beach last February and -- at their own expense -- held a forum to show the video to the local community. Happy Valentine's Day!
Over the past months, White and Nixon have shared that tape with numerous organizations and individuals -- also dogging Robertson at the GOP convention in San Diego last summer and demonstrating outside of the Christian Coalition's annual "Road to Victory" conference at the Washington Hilton in September. The good news is that many more people are now aware of the Pat Robertson agenda. The bad news is that gay-bashing is still a staple on The 700 Club.
On January 7, 1997, for example -- the second day of a 2-week telethon called "Crisis of Confusion" -- the target of the day was the all-destructive, "anti-orthodox" multiculturalism. Pat told his followers that the two biggest problems in America are homosexuality and abortion. There is a "malevolent force pushing this agenda" that is "perverse and evil." These are recurring themes on The 700 Club, where Robertson & Company spare nothing to create their distorted world of intolerance, fear and hatred.
But Pat Robertson has not heard the last of Mel White. And neither, for that matter, has William Jefferson Clinton.
Mel White and Gary Nixon spent Inauguration Day in Washington. They did not, however, dance at some inaugural ball or other high fallutin extravaganza put on by the proverbial "Gay Community." They spent January 19-20th at Dupont Circle leading a 24-Hour Fast and Prayer Vigil For Justice -- and launching a four-year, nationwide Justice Candle Vigil.
"LIGHT YOUR JUSTICE CANDLE," White said, "that the President might see the light!" The event was "not a protest or a confrontation" against Clinton. Candles were lit "to honor your high office and to assure you that we understand the difficulty you have in serving all Americans fairly." Nonetheless, White urged the President "not to sacrifice the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered Americans again in his second term for some 'greater political Good' -- especially in view of the ongoing campaign by Pat Robertson and the other religious and political extremists."
Truth? Justice? Reconciliation? Rights? A four-year, nationwide, non-megafunded Justice Candle Vigil?
This guy Mel White and his partner Gary Nixon have one hell of a lot of nerve!
(And I wonder where they'll be THIS VALENTINE'S DAY?)
Copyright 1996 Public-Spirited Enterprises. All rights reserved. This article may not be reproduced in its entirety without permission. If it is quoted or referred to, please do give "c.c.watch" appropriate credit.
Last Update: 11/01/98