Adoption Advice from Pat Robertson: Promotes family destruction; international adoptees are “weird;” and more

Pat Robertson does it just in time and for NAAM2019 Day 5.

Being a machoist at heart (I’m adopted) I’ve been a fan of Pat Robertson’s since the 1970s when he still had a semblance of a functioning brain.I’ve even seen him in person a couple of times, (Don’t ask!)  Currently I don’t have cable (only Roku) so I don’t get to watch as I would like. I do, though follow his increasingly weird escapades on Right Wing Watch and other public sources. 

Today RIghtwing.Watch posted Robertson’s latest advice on adoption during his regular 700 Club Q&A session. You never know what the dottering old fool will say: AIDS comes from towels; let’s nuke the State Department;  let’s assassinate Hugo Chavez; feminists are socialists who practice witchcraft and kill their husbands and children; Hait’s shitty economy is the fault of the devil. So today he advised a young unmarried Christian couple, who seem to be perfectly, or at least passably happy, break up and ship the baby off to an adoption agency. For everybody’s own good.  Poor people shouldn’t have babies.

Unfortunately, I have been unable to find this post on RWW’s webpage, and only have the Tweet  But don’t fear! If you can’t get into Twitter…

…Dead State picked up the story and included the video.  For those with delicate eyes, ears, and stomachs here is a transcript: to save you a trip to the ER.

Brittany:

“My boyfriend and I are 5 months pregnant,” Brittany’s question read. “We want to move together, so we can share the experience and be together when the baby is born. Both of our parents frown upon this idea and say it is not biblical. I have no job, but will get one after the baby is born, and he has a very low-paying job, so we cannot afford to get married. Is it wrong to move in together even though we aren’t married?”  “I have seen unmarried Christians living together countless times,” “If it is wrong, why is it wrong and what can we do?”

Robertson:

Here’s the deal.” “If you don’t like what’s going on, you can always kinda say, ‘I’m leaving, goodbye.’ But if you get married and then you get divorced, all of a sudden it’s a totally different scenario, and you don’t have a job that’s adequate, you’re boyfriend doesn’t — so you made a mistake.”

 

“Why don’t you get some adoption agency to take the baby, and you two go your separate ways. You know, you want to move in together — ‘My boyfriend and I are pregnant’ — he’s not pregnant, you’re pregnant — you know, it’s your terminology that’s screwed up. But hey, two wrongs just don’t make a right … you’re not capable of getting into marriage, you’re not capable of raising a child, you don’t have the time or the patience — all of a sudden when the pressures of marriage and motherhood come upon you, you won’t be able to handle it. Don’t do it.”

Perhaps Robertson had a moment of clarity, His own long-standing marriage was by shotgun. It’s no secret among serious Robertson observers know that his son Gordon has the charisma of a potato, For a while, Robertson appeared to favor Teen Mania/Acquire the Fire entrepreneur and wannabe rocker Ron Luce. as a successor to the Robertson Empire. But then Luce blew up his own empire and filed for Chapter, 7,  $5.2 million negative net worth, so it’s back to Gordon.

******

Of course, Roberson has always had unique views on adoption 

Here’s a sampling in descending order.

 September 2012, Robertson, responding to a single adoptive mother of three internationally adopted daughters complaining that as soon as men learned she had adoptees they dumped her. Bios were one thing. Adoptees another. Robertson’s co-host called the men “dogs,” but Robertson had quite a different take: Abused children need not apply.

A man doesn’t want to take on the United Nations, and a woman has all these various children, blended family, what is it – you don’t know what problems there are. I’m serious. I’ve got a dear friend, an adopted son, a little kid from an orphanage down in Columbia. Child had brain damage, grew up weird. And you just never know what’s been done to a child before you get that child. What kind of sexual abuse has been, what kind of cruelty, what kind of food deprivation, etc. etc.

Well, that brought out the troops including the anti-abortion press and the SBC’s Russell Moore who said Robertson’s statement was “of the devil.” oops! Even Robertson’s own Christian Broadcasting Network took him to task and Robertson issued an I-didn’t mean-what-I-said letter of apology.  I’ve always wondered if it were written by someone else while they locked the boss in the closet. And I also wonder what former Miss America and longtime CBNer and 700 Club co-host Terry Meeuwsen thought about this outburst. She and her husband are the parents of seven, mostly adopted children, including three daughters from Ukraine, Do they have two heads?

July 2, 1996., 700 Club.  The following conversation discussing Tennessee’s Doe v Sunquist is taken from the official transcript of that show published at the time on the 700 Club’s home page since erased. Sekulow was and remains the director of Robertson’s American Center for Law and Justice and is currently part of Donald Trump’s personal legal team. ACLJ brought the Sunquist suit–and lost.

In this discussion Sekulow claimed, and Robertson agreed that the adoptee rights movement is a front, created by abortion rights advocates. I have written about this several places including here, 

Sekulow:

Pat, they have had to. Can I give you tangible evidence? No, but I can give you the legal evidence. We looked at cases in the Untied States where judges from a Court of Appeals all over the country said, “this type of legislation opening up these records like this is pro-abortion.” Those were the words a court said. There’s a North Carolina Court of Appeals, Louisiana Court of Appeals, Texas Court of Appeals. These same types of bills were being put forward and the courts said, “The legislation is not pro-life. They said the opposite. They said, “This is pro-abortion This will encourage abortions and discourage adoptions.”