Release Date:	March 7, 1995
Contact:	Dawn Rankin-Phelps
		(804)543-2460

Jailed Homosexual Minister Responds to Robertson's Spokesperson 

To:	Gene Kapp, Spokesman for Pat Robertson
From:	Mel White, isolation cell 276, Virginia Beach City Jail

March 6, 1995

Dear Mr. Kapp,

For the past 2 years and more, we have monitored carefully the
anti-homosexual campaign of Mr. Robertson, is 700 Club, the print and
broadcast material of his Christian Coalition and his endless and
inflammatory fund raising letters.
It is amazing that you would say to the media that Pat is innocent of making
negative claims about gay and lesbian Americans.  And equally amazing that you
, a former reporter yourself, can't see the connection between the barrage of
false claims and the rise of intolerance, discrimination and hate crimes
against God's gay and lesbian children.
For example: Mr. Robertson has stated on so many occasions and in such
different ways:
- that we gays and lesbians are a threat to the nation's future'
- that we undermine the values on which American was founded;
- that when we are tolerated it causes God's wrath as in the California
earthquakes and the Mississippi floods;
- that a lesbian (Pat named Roberta Achtenburg for one example) should not
even be considered for high office, disparaging her professional and moral
background and sneering in judgment and disbelief wen he heard she and her
partner had a child;
- that lesbians recruit young heterosexual women because lesbians hate
motherhood;
- that gay and lesbians have an agenda to destroy the American family.

Mr. Kapp, millions of Americans hear and believe these false claims as they
trickle down from Pat and the others through the mouths of pastors and
parents and kids with baseball bats, knives and clubs.  People begin to
believe that if we really are a threat, we should be condemned if not
eliminated.  Fear, anger, intolerance become epidemic.  Deceived and
victimized by the rhetoric, parents discard their gay children.  Churches
excommunicate their gay members.  Bosses, military and civilian, fire their
gay workers.  We lose our jobs, our apartments, our children.  We even lose
our lives.
But Pat goes one step further.  He insists that God hates us as well.  In his
February 7 fax to me, Pat says it again "God gave them up." It isn't enough
to say, as he did, that we are "the last stage in the decline of a
population" he says God too has abandoned us.
He should be ashamed of taking that verse from Romans I out of its ancient,
pagan, orgiastic, cultic context and applying it to God's gay and lesbian
children.  Pat's rhetoric leads, not just to physical violence, but leads to
violence of the spirit, destruction of the soul.
And when we reach out to help heal those wounded spirits, to show our brothers
 and sisters that their sexual orientation, too, is a wonderful, mysterious
gift from their Creator, Pat disagrees.  He claims that homosexuality is
"just sin."  And can be reversed by praying the sinner prayer.  Pat knows
that there is no long term evidence that anyone becomes and stays "EX-GAY."
 He might as well be recommending leeches for physical health or lobotomies
for emotional healing.
Pat's false claims go farther.  He also warns against mainline and UFMCC and
independent churches that accept gay and lesbian members.  "They are not
churches at all," declares a CBN pamphlet "Gay Lib."  "They are part of a
group of people who play lip service to Jesus but don't really know Him."
 And he calls us pastors and lay leaders who disagree with his false claims,
"...not Christians at all or are very badly deceived."
Mr. Kapp, my charge stands.  The false and inflammatory claims made by Pat
Robertson and his followers lead to misunderstanding, intolerance, violence,
and death.  Its time you quit defending Pat's false charges and help him
understand the damage he is doing to this nation and to Christ's church.

Mel

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