(Credit: Critical Miss! image by Scott Ogle, CC BY 2.0)
US Southern Baptist televangelist Pat Robertson has spoken out against the evils of playing Dungeons & Dragons.
Someone should tell Pat Robertson that it's not the 1980s, that pearl-clutchers the world over have moved on from the Charleston and funny-books, and are now concentrating their moral panic on video games.
The outspoken Southern Baptist televangelist has denounced, it seems, everything except for denouncing things. Homosexuality, reproductive choice, paganism, feminism, Hinduism, Islam. He famously blamed September 11 on abortion, declared Hurricane Katrina punishment from God for abortion, and the Haiti earthquake punishment for the country's founders' "pact with the Devil".
Now once again, he's banging the ol' "Dungeons & Dragons leads to Satanism" drum. It should come as no surprise that Robertson seems stuck somewhere in the dark ages. What is surprising is that he's up-to-date enough to know that D&D exists. Earlier this month, a Christian Broadcasting Network 700 Club viewer asked the question, "Is it safe for a Christian to enjoy video games that have magic in them, if the person playing the games is not practicing the magic?"
Robertson, 83, appears to have no idea what video games actually are. "I don't know what game you're talking about," he replied. "But I know there's one called Dungeons & Dragons that has literally destroyed people's lives." Scandalous.
Shhhh. No one tell him about ankles.