He mouthed the words “Hate the sin, not the sinner” — six short words — after “sermons” of thousands of words that hated the sinner.
His “Christian” credentials allowed violent people to claim beatings, torture, and murder were godly. He openly praised political opportunists using our lives – of late, our trans family’s very existence – as a way to make money and cultivate power and encourage cruelty. They claim godliness too, while many don’t even hate us. We’re convenient. Which is one of the aspects of abuse that leaves those on the receiving end feeling like they’re not human to their abusers. We’re just the thing that’s handy.
On hearing the news, my first thought was to paraphrase Clarence Darrow: That’s an obituary I will read with great pleasure. But my feelings can’t be dismissed with a quip. Also, I have no intention of reading that obituary and even if I did, it would give me no pleasure.
Pat Robertson’s damage to me wasn’t limited to his hatred and empowerment of evil against me. He also made me – briefly – the kind of person to be glad someone died. Even worse, to want to gloat.
I don’t want to be that person. It’s not the best self I aspire to. It took me some time to leave that thought and get to a better place.
Now, as I wish for all like him, I hope he finds the afterlife he wished on me and mine, and along the way has a conversation with the Jesus from the Bible I’ve read, who gave only two commandments: Love God, and Love Thy Neighbor as thyself.
We were his neighbors.
How much he must have hated himself.
I wish for all of us a sense of a weight lifted, an evil banished. We need all the energy we can spare to resist all those who remain, doing the work of hate he empowered and praised.
That’s all the mental space I will give to the man for the rest of my days.
