the Taliban Republicans are showing their face here:
WASHINGTON, Thursday, Sept. 13 - The Rev. Jerry Falwell said gays, feminists, "pagans," and a host of liberal advocacy groups have made "God mad" and must share the blame for the terrorist attacks this week that took the lives of thousands of Americans at the World Trade Center in New York and at the Pentagon outside Washington. Falwell made his remarks Thursday, Sept. 13, while appearing on the religious television program The
700 Club, hosted by the Rev. Pat Robertson. Falwell and Robertson are among the nation's strongest
opponents of gay civil rights.
"I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way - all of them who have tried to secularize America - I point the finger in their face and say, 'You helped this happen,'" Falwell
said on the program, which was broadcast nationally.
"Well, I totally concur," Robertson told Falwell, "and the problem is we have adopted their agenda at the highest levels of our government." The comments by Falwell and Robertson came at a time when gay activists have joined leading Republicans and Democrats in calling for national unity and full, bipartisan support for President Bush's
planned response to the terrorist attacks.
"The terrible tragedy that has befallen our nation, and indeed the entire global community, is the sad byproduct of fanaticism," said Lorri L. Jean, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.
"It has its roots in the same fanaticism that enables people like Jerry Falwell to preach hate against those who do not think, live, or love in the exact same way he does," Jean said.
"The tragedies that have occurred this week did not occur because someone made God mad, as Mr. Falwell
asserts," Jean continued, in a statement released Sept. 13. "They occurred because of hate, pure and
simple."
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