Christian conservative Pat Robertson
has stepped down as host of CBN's The 700 Club.
Robertson, 91, said in a statement that
he is moving on to other projects.
“Today's show will be my final as
host of The 700 Club,” he said on Friday. “My replacement
will be my very capable son, Gordon, who will take over as full-time
host of the program.”
Robertson, who founded the Christian
Broadcasting Network (CBN), said that would continue in his roles as
chancellor and CEO of Regent University.
In 1988, Robertson, a former Southern
Baptist minister, unsuccessfully campaigned to become the Republican
Party's presidential nominee.
Last year, he backed former President
Donald Trump's re-election bid.
As host of The 700 Club, he
often railed against LGBT rights, including marriage equality. In one
segment, he advised a mother to treat her gay son like a “drug
addict.”
“You cannot go along and say, 'I
agree with your lifestyle,'” Robertson told the mother who wrote in
asking for his advice. “So don't be an enabler, any more if he's a
drug addict, you don't enable people to continue in their drug
habits.”
In 2014, he claimed that AIDS was God's
“penalty” for “immoral” gay sex. Later that same year, CNN
anchor Anderson Cooper put Robertson on his “Ridiculist” for
saying people can get AIDS from towels.
“You might get AIDS in Kenya,”
Robertson warned a viewer worried that he might be infected with
Ebola while visiting Kenya. “The people have AIDS. You got to be
careful, I mean, the towels could have AIDS.”
Cooper, who is openly gay, also mocked
Robertson's claim of a ring that gives people AIDS.
“A ring that gives you AIDS,”
Cooper said. “I've never seen that particular section of Zales.
Have you?”
Most recently, Robertson
blamed the COVID-19 pandemic on same-sex marriage, abortion, and
people who are “anti-Israel.”