VIRGINIA BEACH, VA — Televangelist Pat Robertson is not in any way happy about the fact that retail megastore Target has decided to stop separating their toy aisles by the presumed gender of the child who will be playing with the toys. In a statement released by the retailer, Target acknowledged that “shopping preferences and needs change and, as guests have pointed out, in some departments like toys, home or entertainment, suggesting products by gender is unnecessary,” and they told their customers “We heard you, and we agree,” but Robertson took to his “Holy Roller” podcast to decry Target’s decision over the weekend.
“Oh, Target agrees with its hedonistic, Godless, amoral customers,” Robertson sarcastically asked on the podcast, “that’s wonderful. But I have to ask, just what kind of society will we have when boys can go into the same aisle for their Lego as girls go in for theirs.” Robertson said that “allowing boys to think it’s okay to play with pink Lego while girls think it’s okay to play with non-pink Lego is a one-way ticket to Hell.”
The 85-year-old evangelical Christian told his listeners that “God’s wrath is growing” because “first the Boy Scouts decide that they don’t care if a loving adult who happens to be gay wants to lead its scouts and now Target is trying to tell us that boys and girls can play with the same toys and not cause the downfall of civilization, which ironically I have been kind of telling everyone is actually a good thing since technically that’s the start of the Tribulation and the end of the world and Jesus’ second coming and — oh, would you look at that, I have something turgid in my pants all of a sudden!”
Perhaps sensing that some of his critics might point out that Jesus Hubert Christ, the man on whom Robertson’s faith is based, never gave any instructions about gender dysphoria, and therefore Rev. Robertson can only be speaking for himself, the elderly pontiff batted that criticism down in anticipation. “Christ himself may not have had a single opinion on gender binary roles, but I do,” Robertson told his audience, “and to me, that’s the same thing. I speak for God. No one else. Me. God is all mine, none yours.”
“You know, Target’s symbol is a bullseye? Well, guess what this decision does,” Robertson asked rhetorically before answering himself with, “it puts God’s bullseye on their stores. So don’t be surprised the next time something bad happens at a Target store.” He then began to give some examples of what God’s anti-Target wrath could look like. “Maybe he’ll send a person with a gun, claiming to be an open-carry activist — which of course every Christian knows God supports one-hundred percent — and that activist will mow down customers in a Target. Don’t blame that on our country’s obsession with guns. Don’t blame that on loose gun laws and no mental health infrastructure to speak of. Don’t blame it on any rational or logical reasons for it, blame it on the unprovable, supernatural reasoning I’m presenting now.”
So what solution is there, in Robertson’s view for the events that are unfolding in modern society? What does he think can and should be done to turn back the tide of growing acceptance for LGBT equality and shifting the paradigms on how gender roles are viewed by the public at large? “The only way we are going to win, the only way we are going to stake out victory for Jesus,” Robertson said on his podcast, “is for you to give me — I mean my church — more money.”
“We cannot defeat Satan if I don’t have a third boat,” Robertson said as he was finishing the segment. “We can’t beat the Devil if I don’t have a vacation home in Spain. It’s like Jesus was always saying — the church is not strong if the pastor isn’t wealthy as fuck. It’s in the back of the Bible somewhere, near the appendices. Clearly, the only way we have to march this great nation of ours into the arms of Christ is for you all to give me — excuse me, my church — as much money as you possibly can. Please, give us money. Let me repeat: money, money, money, money.”
