While attempting to distance himself from long-time friend and financial supporter, televangelist Pat Robertson, the anti-choice, Republican candidate for Virginia governor, Mark Earley, refused to condemn Robertson’s remarks in which Robertson supported Jerry Falwell’s remarks blaming the September 11th terrorist attacks on God’s wrath against feminists, abortion rights proponents, civil liberties groups, and gays and lesbians. The refusal is not surprising. Both are widely know to be staunch, anti-abortion, anti-feminist leaders.
Meanwhile, Falwell made a weak apology for his remarks Tuesday, calling them “harsh and ill-timed,” but standing behind his assessment that America has been spiritually diminished and harmed by pro-choice and pro-LGBT policy and public opinion. Rev. Falwell also claimed that his statements were theologically complex and misunderstood by “a secular media and audience.” Robertson has attempted to distance himself from Falwell’s remarks, to which he had originally replied, “Amen.” Robertson now says that he did not “fully understand” Falwell’s remarks.
Falwell stated, on his Christian Broadcast Network: “I really believe the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way–all of them who have tried to secularize America–I point the finger in their face and say, ‘You helped this happen.'”
