Watch: Pat Robertson Claims 'Wicked (Gay) Ways' Brought on COVID-19

Anti-gay televangelist Pat Robertson sounded a familiar note of anti-LGBTQ blame in a time of crisis while chatting with "700 Club" co-host
Terry Meeuwsen, Media Matters reports.

The two were talking on the program on April 20 when Meeuwsen suggested that God might have withdrawn His divine favor from America in a rage over legal abortion, same-sex marriage equality, and "anti-Israel" attitudes.

Media Matters quoted Meeuwsen as referring to a viewer who had sent in a question. Said Meeuwsen:

"This is John, Pat, who says, "Pat, last week you were talking about COVID-19. You quoted Chronicles 7:14. How can God heal our land and forgive the sins when abortion and same-sex marriage are laws and many people are anti-Israel. Doesn't this prevent his healing and forgiveness?"

Robertson went along with the leading question, answering:

"You know the Bible says - they turn from their wicked ways. They didn't get forgiven. They will turn from their wicked ways. And part of what we've done is turn. We are not turning when we have done terrible things. We have broken the covenant that God made with mankind. We have violated his covenant. We have taken the life of the innocent, slaughtered them by the tens of millions. Children made in the image of God. And we have abused the poor. I mean, we've allowed this terrible plague to spread throughout our society. And it's a small wonder God would hold us guilty. But the answer is, you know, you confess your sins and forsake them. Then he heals the land. It's not before.

In other words, Robertson was suggesting that the COVID-19 pandemic might not relax its grip in America unless laws in the United States punish women for exercising the reproductive freedoms, and the right for non-heterosexual couples to marry is rescinded.

Unclear is how people's feelings about Israel could be legislated. Also unclear is what God wants in order to remove the pandemic from nations outside of the U.S.

The pandemic began in China and quickly spread around the globe. While some nations acted quickly and decisively to combat the illness, others downplayed the risk and denied that COVID-19 can be dangerous.

In the United States, President Donald Trump - whom many evangelicals ardently support despite his having been married three times and numerous claims of sexual assault that have leveled against him - reportedly ignored intelligence warnings about the virus for months, even sending medical supplies that would later become critically short in supply, to China.

Later, as COVID-19 began to spread in America, denied that the disease was of serious concern, dismissing those who attempted to sound the alarm as perpetrators of a "hoax" intended to damage his presidency.

Critics now say that Trump's own early inaction, together with his subsequent attempts to lay blame elsewhere and his overall handling of the crisis, may have damaged his presidency and his chances to win a second term in this year's elections.

Anti-LGBTQ preachers have often been known to link sexual minorities with natural disasters in a bid to suggest that divine retribution is at play for either accepting or else not sufficiently persecuting, non-heterosexuals and non-cisgender people. Notoriously anti-gay Australian rugby star Israel Folau did just that in a controversial sermon last year in which he claimed that devastating brush fires were God's way of punishing Australia for the "sin" of permitting gay and lesbian couples marriage equality.

But such claims are notably inconsistent. Recently, for instance, states in the American South were battered by severe weather, including deadly tornadoes, with more severe storms arriving a week later; no evangelical preachers hurried to suggest that God was displeased with Southern states for regressive policies, including anti-LGBTQ stances.

One popular claim used to be that God doled out punishment in the form of earthquakes. That particular claim had been less prevalent since it has become common knowledge that in some areas, fracking by the petroleum industry can cause tremors - not because of any moral concerns around the practice, which many see as environmentally unfriendly, but due to the physics associated with pumping large amounts of water into subsurface layers of rock that may be somewhat unstable.

But those inconsistencies have not stopped some on the anti-LGBTQ religious right from a consistency of their own: Blaming the gays at every opportunity.