Pat Robertson Dominated by Homosexuals

That's his being dominated face

This story is pretty much par for the course for good old Pat Robertson, who at this point has his own tag here on Augoeides. But the headline was too funny for me to ignore. According to Pat, he and the rest of the culture are being "dominated" by homosexuals who allegedly control the media and are forcing him to watch LGBT folks on television.

Appearing on his program The 700 Club earlier this week, the televangelist went on a rant about a supposed “left-wing bias” in the media. Blaming the supposed bias on gays and lesbians, Robertson declared:

"We have given the ground to a small minority. You figure, lesbians, one percent of the population; homosexuals, two percent of the population. That’s all. That’s statistically all. But they have dominated — dominated the media, they’ve dominated the cultural shift and they have infiltrated the major universities. It’s just unbelievable what’s being done. A tiny, tiny minority makes a huge difference. The majority — it’s time it wakes up."

As usual, Robertson is wrong. The numbers refute any claim that the media is being “dominated” by gays and lesbians. According to the latest “Where We Are on TV” report from GLAAD, only about 4.8% of television roles are LGBTQ characters.

Actually, Robertson's numbers are a little low based on the best research we have regarding the percentage of the population that identifies as gay or lesbian. His 3% estimate is on the very low end, and the real percentage may be as high as 10% - though that's from Kinsey, whose study had some sampling bias. Anyway, the point is that if 4.8% of television roles are gay or lesbian, that probably isn't too far off from the real number. As Stephen Colbert once pointed out, facts have a well-known liberal bias.


So what Pat is complaining about is not "domination" but rather "representation." His variety of Poor Oppressed Christian is incapable of playing well with others. I'm convinced that they support Trump despite his (very) many flaws because they think he's the best chance they have of implementing their ideal society where they never have to confront anyone who believes differently than they do. The mere existence of gays and lesbians fundamentally threatens their worldview, and as they see it, oppresses them.

Fortunately Pat's followers aren't the majority. They're about a quarter of all Christians, or 20% of the American population, who identify as right-wing evangelicals. Using Kinsey's numbers, they're only about twice as numerous as gays and lesbians, and if you include everybody under the LGBT umbrella, the numbers are pretty close. So that's just one more thing Pat is really, really wrong about. And anyway, he's the one going off because he can't stand even seeing LGBT folks on television. I guess he and his followers like pretending that anything they can't see doesn't exist.