Televangelist Pat Robertson says that marriage equality is an abomination, and that same-sex couples want a stamp of approval from the Church so people don’t think they’re sinful. Robertson, who made these comments yesterday on his 700 Club television show, implied that same-sex couples already have full equality with civil ceremonies, and that the Church owns marriage.
Brian Tashman at Right Wing Watch, who offers this video and transcript, notes the Pat Robertson segment “featured a story on Rose Marie Belforti, the New York town clerk who refuses to sign marriage licenses following the passage of the state law providing marriage rights for gay and lesbian couples. The highly sympathetic story featured interviews with Belforti along with her allies in New Yorkers for Constitutional Freedoms and her legal counsel, the Alliance Defense Fund. People For the American Way Foundation is representing a lesbian couple Beforti turned away, and Belforti is facing a write-in challenger in her re-election race tomorrow.”
Robertson also applauded Belforti, calling her a “prisoners of conscience.”
Pat Robertson: Isn’t it a shame that this kind of thing has come up. It’s what the Bible calls an abomination. It’s one thing to say these folks should have all the freedom and all the rights of any citizen, that’s the American way, but marriage particularly is a sacrament of the church and the fact that they have civil ceremonies and civil clerks that sign licenses it’s not the same thing as marriage. And the homosexuals want to have the imprimatur of the church on their lifestyle, that’s what this is all about. They don’t want to have anybody say what they’re doing is sinful. So these clerks have stand up as prisoners of conscience and it looks like a steamroller is taking them out of the way, but we’ll see what happens. You know, sometimes a few brave people have changed the course of history.
Â