Fact Check

Pat Robertson: 'Gay People Should Wear Specially-Colored Clothes to Warn Straight People'?

Reports that televangelist Pat Robertson said gay people should wear colors by which heterosexual people might easily identify them are fake news.

Published Nov. 3, 2015

Claim:
Televangelist Pat Robertson said gay people should wear specific colors so they can be easily identified by straight people.

In a 2 November 2015 article titled "Pat Robertson: 'Gay People Should Wear Specially-Colored Clothes to Warn Straight People,'" the web site Religionlo reported:

Televangelist Pat Robertson recently repeated his prediction that LGBT rights will provoke God to destroy America’s financial markets, warning “The 700 Club” viewers that God’s wrath is on its way. He claimed that the U.S. is turning into Sodom now that it has “enshrined sodomy into the United States Constitution” and cities like Houston are trying to “force women to go into men’s bathrooms and men to go into women’s bathrooms.”

“Now it’s a constitutional right for sodomites to marry each other,” he lamented, warning that “the wrath of God is revealed against this stuff.” He explained: “I don’t want the wrath of God to hit this country, it’s a great country, I’d like to see America continue strong, but this is one way of weakening it. First of all, we’re going to have this financial collapse. We’re setting up for a massive financial collapse and I think if God is going to hurt this country that’s probably the way he’d do it.”

At that point, a viewer called in and inquired Robertson whether his grim predictions of such a crisis can somehow be averted, to which Robertson gave a somewhat confusing answer: “I believe so, yes, but we need to stop spreading lesbianism and homosexuality in order to achieve that. And the only way to stop the spread of these diseases that are plaguing the country is to make some sort of obvious distinction between gay people and normal, straight people.”

“I personally believe that we must impose a rule on the gay population that would require them to wear specially-colored clothes, for example. I’m thinking we need to go through the Senate with this and we need to make it official. That way, regular people would know that the person wearing the said color is a deviant sodomite and that they need to stay away from them at all cost, as well as keep their children away from their reach,” Robertson opined.

Although it's true Robertson said America "enshrined sodomy into the United States Constitution" and described efforts “force women to go into men’s bathrooms and men to go into women’s bathrooms," the "obvious distinction" portion of the article was fabricated (as Religionlo itself indicated). Articles on the self-described "hybrid" news site Religionlo (and related sites like Newslo) embellish already controversial events and statements with falsified elements.

Articles on Newslo and its companion sites feature clickable boxes at the top of each page allowing readers to "Show Facts" or "Hide Facts":

Newslo's articles default to the "Hide Facts" option, so most readers remain unaware of fabrications disguised alongside otherwise truthful information, but Newslo's disclaimer notes that "Newslo is the first hybrid News/Satire platform on the web. Readers come to us for a unique brand of entertainment and information that is enhanced by features like our fact-button, which allows readers to find what is fact and what is satire."

Kim LaCapria is a former writer for Snopes.