Is Pat Robertson Softening on Pornography?

(Game of Thrones.  I just know it's Game of Thrones.)

It was a little over three years ago that Pat Robertson made headlines for suggesting that marijuana be decriminalized.  Even though a CBN spokesperson felt the need to walk Pat's comments back—"he was advocating that our government revisit the severity of the existing laws blah blah blah"—it was rightly considered a softening of a decades-long hard-line antidrug stance that Pat shared with pretty much everyone else on the Right.  (See, for example, this alarmist story The 700 Club ran when California and Arizona passed medical marijuana referenda in 1996, complete with Pat's unsupportive follow-up comments.)

So maybe Pat's mellowing with age, because today a viewer asked Pat if she should be concerned that her pastor watches a cable show with nudity in it, and instead of blasting the moral cesspool of popular culture and the easy availability of pornography, his answer was surprisingly reasonable:

“The human body is not essentially nasty.  I mean, God made us without clothes.  You look at that famous statue of David that's considered one of the masterpieces of the Renaissance, and…he doesn't have any clothes on at all.  The Venus de Milo and some of those others…the Sistine Chapel, Adam has got no clothes on… The body is not essentially pornographic.  I think to make it so is a mistake.  It's what's in your mind. 

“I don't know what your pastor's watching, what show it is.  Maybe it's got some redeeming qualities.  But I sure wouldn't turn him off because he's watching a few clips of nudity on TV. I don't know what show you're talking about, some of them are real nasty…

“The human form per se isn't necessarily dirty.  It's what our minds make it.”

Keep in mind that this is the same Pat Robertson who used to warn his audience that just a glimpse of pornography can send you spiraling into a full-blown addiction.

Well, you read it here first: Pat Robertson's okay with nudity on television now.  And apparently, drugs and violence, too: 20 minutes earlier, The 700 Club featured the story of a meth dealer who found God, and he introduced it with, "You probably saw the blockbuster cable series Breaking Bad."  Yup.  Pat expects the good Christians who tune into him every day to have also watched Breaking Bad.

So…after more than 50 years of inveighing against the depravity of our popular culture and telling his audience to tune it out, Pat Robertson's pretty much acknowledging that even the people who watch him aren't really listening to him.