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Next entry: Yes, homophobes, your straight neighbors are Doing It Previous entry: The limits of anti-violence slogans

God finally calls 91-year-old Oral Roberts home

ReligionSex

Oral Roberts, founder of the school that bears his name, passed away. The press release is excerpted below.

Dr. Oral Roberts, a legendary evangelist who rose from humble beginnings to become one of the most influential Christian leaders of the 20th century, died today in Newport Beach, Calif., due to complications from pneumonia. His son, Richard, and daughter, Roberta, were at his side. The founder of Oral Roberts Evangelistic Association and Oral Roberts University was 91.

 
There will be a private family internment. Arrangements for a public memorial service in Tulsa are pending and will be announced soon.
 
“Oral Roberts was the greatest man of God I’ve ever known,” Richard Roberts said. “A modern-day apostle of the healing ministry, an author, educator, evangelist, prophet, and innovator, he was the only man of his generation to build a worldwide ministry, an accredited university, and a medical school.
 
“Beloved husband, father, grandfather and great-grandfather, he was not only my earthly father; he was my spiritual father and mentor. The last member of his generation in the Roberts family, he had a passion to bring healing to the sick.
 
“His name is synonymous with miracles. He came along when many in Christendom did not believe in the power of God and His goodness. Oral Roberts was known for sayings such as ‘God Is a Good God,’ ‘Expect a Miracle,’ ‘Release Your Faith,’ and ‘Plant Your Seed for a Harvest.’
 
“The Bible teaches that when a Christian dies, he or she is instantly transferred into the presence of God. The past few months, my father has talked about going home to be with the Lord on a daily basis. He has run his race and finished his course. Now he is in heaven, and we as Christians have the Bible promise

Roberts may be best known for his controversial fundraising. During one drive in 1987, Roberts announced to a television audience that God would "call him home" unless he raised $8 million by March

In later years, his school was rocked by a sex scandal of biblical proportions when former ORU President Richard Roberts was involved in a sex and money laundering flap. And this came out about Richard Roberts' wife:

• A longtime maintenance employee was fired so that an underage male friend of Mrs. Roberts could have his position.

• Mrs. Roberts - who is a member of the board of regents and is referred to as ORU's "first lady" on the university's Web site - frequently had cell-phone bills of more than $800 per month, with hundreds of text messages sent between 1 a.m. to 3 a.m. to "underage males who had been provided phones at university expense."

• The university jet was used to take one daughter and several friends on a senior trip to Orlando, Fla., and the Bahamas. The $29,411 trip was billed to the ministry as an "evangelistic function of the president."

• Mrs. Roberts spent more than $39,000 at one Chico's clothing store alone in less than a year, and had other accounts in Texas and California. She also repeatedly said, "As long as I wear it once on TV, we can charge it off." The document cites inconsistencies in clothing purchases and actual usage on TV.

• Mrs. Roberts was given a white Lexus SUV and a red Mercedes convertible by ministry donors.

• University and ministry employees are regularly summoned to the Roberts' home to do the daughters' homework.

• The university and ministry maintain a stable of horses for exclusive use by the Roberts' children.

• The Roberts' home has been remodeled 11 times in the past 14 years.

It's sad that this sleaze grabbed the most headlines during the twilight years of the pastor.But what did Oral say about sex and homosexuality? Look below the fold.

 

Melissa at Shakesville transcribed a no-longer available YouTube of Oral's views. I did manage to find it though.

We men want to take a woman in our arms, and a girl wants to take a man in her arms, and, pretty soon, we want to take 'em to bed with us! Go on—go over there and touch it! Put your arms around her. Put your hand on her breast. See how far you can take your hand. See how far she'll let you go. Go ahead, girl—touch him at the most sensitive part of his body.

There is one place in the woman's body and one place in the man's body that creates multiplication. There're not two, there're not three, there're not four places, there're not ten places—there is one place, in the woman's vagina and the man's male organ. There's only one place in the woman's body where the male organ was designed to penetrate—the vagina!

Only one organ made to bring forth life—it's the male organ. It's not in lesbianism for the tongue of a female goes into the vagina of another female. It's not in the male where the male organ goes into the part of the, of the body where the, the waste matter comes out of the body, the poison, and he penetrates that part of the body in homosexuality. It's not to be put into the mouth of the man, or the mouth of the man or the woman on the male organ! It is the male organ penetrating the vagina of the woman—the male and the female!

He says look at the orifices of the body, the openings in the body. Certainly you can't put it, put the male organ or the tongue in the eye. Maybe touch the ear. Certainly not in the orifices of the nose, or the navel. But there are a couple of three other places. There's the mouth. There's the anus, where the poisons of the body are excreted, you can put it there. They didn't know how to handle it! There was a FIRE that rose up in them; they didn't know how to CONTAIN, and everybody KNOWS when the sexual arousal reaches a certain point, the person goes INSANE!

A bull after a cow in the heat, if he cannot reach the cow, and there's a barbed wire fence between them, will go through the barbed wire and cut himself to pieces in order to impregnate that cow! I, I, I's raised on a farm. I SAW it. Men and women go WILD—and then when it's perverted, and when it comes homosexuality, it's not only WILD, it is INSANE! And the heat becomes so intense, the sexual heat becomes so INTENSE, the male organ doesn't want the vagina of the woman, but to turn that person over and to enter into the rear where the poison comes out, and it keeps coming out until they develop AIDS with no immunity against disease, and they D-I-E, they die!

[exasperated sigh] God made the female breasts, young man—what's wrong with you handling it, fondling it? Oh, sure, you're married to this girl, you're married to this man, but awww, come on now, let's have a good time. Somebody go get a six pack. Bring in some bourbon. Uhhh, pick up the phone and send in a couple call girls. I go to church, too, but, uh, you know, it didn't make me queer. Well, I wouldn't buy that 100%. [aside] Um, please erase that from the tape, uh, I didn't—let's edit that out, will ya?

[clears throat] The only way you ever become one flesh is when the male organ penetrates the woman's vagina. The only place, the only organs that can come together in completeness is the male organ and the vagina of the woman and they become one—and if you interrupt that in any way, you become adulterous, or a fornicator, or a homosexual. And you introduce a foreign subject; you've adulterated. And if in your SEXUALITY you're outside of marriage with it, and you do anything with marriage outside of the male organ penetrating the vagina, you're outside creation.

Don't have to wait to get married to have intercourse. You don't have to have sexual relations only with your wife or your husband. You can go outside and you can get it all. You don't have to use only the male organ or the vagina of the woman; you can use your tongue, you can use other things, you can use other orifices of the body; you can pervert it—you can pervert EVERYTHING! Man, I got a quick fix. I can gitcha there NOW. I can satisfy you—I can set you, your impulses on FIRE. I can make your senses VIBRATE. I can let ya lay hands on everything that came in the world to get delivered to you now. Now, folks, that tastes good, that feels good; I can't tell ya how good that feels and how good that tastes…

 

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Posted by Pam Spaulding on 02:17 AM • (50) Comments

Ca-reeeep-y. 

Brain bleach, stat.

Comment #1: DonnaDiva  on  12/16  at  02:26 AM

Holy fuck, that is the creepiest shit I have ever read from any fundie in my lifetime.

I mean, this tops the worst of the worst I have ever read from Falwell, Warren and Haggard put together.

Jay-sus.  I think the creepy freak probably exploded some man mustard in his slacks as he was delivering this bizarre rant.

Comment #2: DTG in STL  on  12/16  at  02:47 AM

Wow. Fundies really do need to get laid more.

Comment #3: Cornpone Down Under  on  12/16  at  03:28 AM

It was always a life’s goal to piss in that guy’s mouth. Oh, well, the guy whose mouth I pissed in said his name was Oral Roberts. I didn’t know any different.

Comment #4: I Heart Puppies  on  12/16  at  03:30 AM

Feh.  Another shallow, self-interested snake-oil salesman bites the dust.  Good Riddance To Bad Rubbish.

Oral Roberts University?  Only if you didn’t the cut for the U of Phoenix.

Comment #5: Smartpatrol  on  12/16  at  04:26 AM

As laughable as lunatics like this are, what’s not funny is the millions perhaps billions they have bilked poor people of who thought they were going to get some special blessing from the Lord for sending their donation.  And to top it all off, these charlatans encourage those same folks to go out and vote for candidates who will make them even poorer and even hungrier for a blessing from the Lord.

Hey, I’ve never thought of it in strictly economic terms before.  But we’ve been going through a Jesus bubble.

Comment #6: triviadude  on  12/16  at  04:30 AM

Ewwwwwwww…!
It sounds like he’s telling men to go ahead and grab women’s breasts WITHOUT consent.. That’s just the start of the wrong, but it’s a hella big wrong.

Comment #7: Samantha Vimes  on  12/16  at  04:56 AM

Wow. Just… wow.

OK, his point seems to be that all that “perversion” is wrong, but man alive, he describes it all in such loving detail that it sounds more like he’s encouraging his flock to go out and do these nasty, nasty things(*) and live a life of hedonism.  Heck, if that had been what he was preaching I might have been a bit more receptive to his call, at least in my younger days.  Although the “ewwww” factor in listening to the way he talked about those things might have turned me off even back then.

(*)That’s “nasty, nasty” in his worldview.

Comment #8: JCfromNC  on  12/16  at  05:33 AM

God finally called him home? God finally got around to striking this guy dead for his presumption, you mean.

Comment #9: rea  on  12/16  at  09:41 AM

True story: my uncle worked in television during the late 70s/early 80s and was a tech at a Memphis station that aired Roberts’ show.  One day, drunk and immature, he and a coworker inserted a naked woman on the screen during one of Roberts’ schilling sermons.  Not professional.  Not nice.  But.  Ladies and gentlemen, my uncle who no longer works in tv…

Comment #10: Ranylt  on  12/16  at  10:06 AM

Who gave him permission to rise from his “humble beginnings”.  Aren’t Christians supposed to stay humble?

Comment #11: scratchy888  on  12/16  at  10:19 AM

What is it that he can say “vagina” but can’t use the word “penis” in that creepy rant?  I find that strange.  I harbor no ill will toward the “male organ”, and enjoy it well, but really, why not just use the perfectly respectable “penis”?  That is, after all, what it is called.  I mean, is he afraid that the Great Penis God will unleash terrible retribution upon him lest he speak its name?  Or does he want to keep his flock from thinking of The Organ That Shall Not Be Named?

I also love the “edit out the call girl” bit.

Comment #12: SporkeyO  on  12/16  at  10:34 AM

Just say the word, man.  It won’t make you gay.

SporkeyO beat me to it.  I had to relog in cause I erased cookies or something.

Also, what is with all the deliberate mispronunciations of these words?  Is it just mean, or do his mispronunciations make the words sound dirty?

Comment #13: speedbudget  on  12/16  at  10:40 AM

*It is just me.

Damn.  Gotta drink more coffee.

Comment #14: speedbudget  on  12/16  at  10:40 AM

He’s clearly confused about how HIV is spread.  It’s the receptive partner that is more likely to catch it.  HIV comes more from the semen than from the “poisonous waste”.  But, since when do facts matter to these people?

Comment #15: bananacat  on  12/16  at  10:47 AM

And, of course, the Google ad on the page is for Oral Roberts University.
He was a hateful, greedy man, willing to bilk lots of people out of a lot of money to assuage his own ego and narcissism.
And his whole family appear to have the same entitled attitude.
And ORU has a medical school?  Gah!  That’s depressing.

Comment #16: gravitybear  on  12/16  at  11:01 AM

And you introduce a foreign subject; you’ve adulterated.

Is he saying my girlfriend is cheating on me with our vibrator, or only if it wasn’t made in America?

Comment #17: Egnu Cledge  on  12/16  at  11:06 AM

You know, the stupid Oral Roberts Sunday show was always there.  I’d watch part of it while waiting for “Star Trek” to come on when I was a kid (cause back then, children, there were only 3 networks + PBS and if you were lucky an independent station or two.  You watched what came on, and slugged through the least suckiest while you waited for what you really wanted to watch—cause you didn’t want to miss it and you couldn’t back up the DVR.)

It was boring and annoying and I couldn’t stand Oral Roberts, but I didn’t realize he was such a creep, probably b/c I tuned him out and did other things while suffering through waiting for “Super Chicken”. 

I couldn’t even make it through a minute of him on tape.  Talk about completely embodying ‘rape culture’: go ahead and touch her, see how far she’ll let you go?  Because women don’t actually like sex or participate—sex is a dirty thing that they allow men to do to them.

As for the organ that brings forth life?  It’s not the penis.  I was there at the birth of all three of our children, and my husband’s <strike>penis</strike> male organ was never exposed.  Seems like they all issued out of ME with my female organs.

Comment #18: Caren-Sun-blocking Creator of Animorphic Pancakes  on  12/16  at  11:14 AM

ORU does not have medical school - it briefly did in the ‘80s, before it shut for “financial reasons.”

My gawd, this guy is the original Rick Santorum…ya know, the dude who hated homosexuality so much he had to go describing it in such loving, caressing detail.  Yack.

Comment #19: skylanda  on  12/16  at  11:48 AM

Good riddance to bad rubbish. I can’t think of many others who should enjoy an eternity in hell as much as this pig.

Comment #20: aftercancer  on  12/16  at  11:51 AM

Only the good die young.

Comment #21: maurinsky  on  12/16  at  11:55 AM

maybe the school will die now as well. no great loss to academia.

Comment #22: cpinva  on  12/16  at  12:00 PM

As a native Okie who grew up north of Tulsa in the 50s and 60s, I can only say, “Praise the Lord!  Free at last, free at last!”  I quickly learned to loath him as a vile sanctimonious snake-oil salesman dedicated to the efficient fleecing of the flock.

Comment #23: DrDick  on  12/16  at  12:13 PM

There’s the anus, where the poisons of the body are excreted…

Does he (and every other bigot) think that the penis’ squirts diamonds and buttermilk (to quote a Poi Dog Pondering song)? The vast majority of the time, when someone is using a penis, they’re using it to excrete. You’d think that would be familiar to anyone who’s got one, but Oral (jebus christ, the man’s name was Oral) looks like he’s spent most of his life holding things in until he pickled himself.

Comment #24: Egnu Cledge  on  12/16  at  12:14 PM

There’s the anus, where the poisons of the body are excreted, you can put it there. They didn’t know how to handle it! There was a FIRE that rose up in them; they didn’t know how to CONTAIN, and everybody KNOWS when the sexual arousal reaches a certain point, the person goes INSANE!

Ten bucks says that he was furiously masturbating the whole time he was recording.

Comment #25: schism  on  12/16  at  12:26 PM

schism @ #25:


I’m sure, absolutely, and EEEWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!

Comment #26: DTG in STL  on  12/16  at  12:36 PM

There’s the anus…They didn’t know how to handle it!

You want the anus? You can’t handle the anus!

Comment #27: Egnu Cledge  on  12/16  at  12:39 PM

So it took God over 21-years before finally taking Oral Roberts out?  If “God Is a Good God”, why didn’t she do it in ‘87?...

Comment #28: MikeEss  on  12/16  at  12:41 PM

...over 22-years…

Comment #29: MikeEss  on  12/16  at  12:42 PM

Hey, Hallelujah!

I don’t know which is gettin’ me a touch excited, the news or that ramble.

The ramble does remind me of another fundie sermon I heard once . . for some reason, some pastor found it necessary to give the Lovemakin’ 101 to the flock.  In fairly explicit detail.  All in the name of Jesus and hetero Christ-sanctified sex.  It was Bible soft-porn.  I’m wondering if the congregation all got to leave the kids in the nursery and duck out for a quickie afterward.

Comment #30: idiosynchronic  on  12/16  at  12:43 PM

“The Bible teaches that when a Christian dies, he or she is instantly transferred into the presence of God.”

I’d like to see chapter and verse on this little nugget.  He must be reading from a different Bible; my Bible doesn’t say anything like that.

Fucking Bible thumpers can’t even read.

Comment #31: ummeli  on  12/16  at  12:44 PM

One of the few good things to come out of Oral Roberts University is current University of Kansas head basketball coach Bill Self.  It was his first head coaching job.

Roberts was the guy who said he saw a 900-foot Jesus who told him to establish the ORU Medical School.  That would be the inspiration for the name of MC 900 ft. Jesus.

Comment #32: liberalrob  on  12/16  at  01:30 PM

Oh, Oral R. I remember that 1987 “god will call me home” fundraiser well. I was in 6th grade at the time, and my best friend just happened to be the daughter of two of the fundiest fundies I have ever known. She told me that her parents had actually donated to Roberts to keep god from taking him. We found that to be a laugh riot, and tried to come up with WHAT, exactly O.R. was going to do with all of his lucre. We concluded that since the Soviet Union wasn’t doing too hot financially at the moment, he might be fixing to buy the Evil Empire and make it his own. We made a whole series of comic books based on that idea- The Soviet Union becomes the Oral Roberts Republic, hilarity ensues.

The only thing that moves me about his passing is the nostalgia it evokes for my wacky, misspent youth…

Comment #33: Neko Onna  on  12/16  at  01:36 PM

On the plus side, that dude is so dead. On the minus side, I think I may need to run a gallon or two of bleach through my brain after reading that sex screed.

Comment #34: Jerry Vinokurov  on  12/16  at  02:19 PM

I was mentally stuck for a couple of minutes on the $39,000-at-Chico’s thing (seriously… how? Can someone explain?), but that sex rant took care of that. So many fundie types are so angry, thinking about all the throbbing hot fun heathens like me are partaking in.

Comment #35: Planet of the Blue Monkeys  on  12/16  at  02:28 PM

Fact: 99.9% of the men who listened to that sermon were trying to hide a boner.

Comment #36: Entomologista  on  12/16  at  02:28 PM

something goooood is gooooing to haaappen to youuuuuuu

and it finally has.  thank you , jebus!

Comment #37: shade  on  12/16  at  02:32 PM

We live by Oral Roberts University, and tell our two kids (5 and 7) that those praying hands are two guys giving each other a high five.

Comment #38: Wallace  on  12/16  at  03:19 PM

Awww. Too bad, so sad. One less fundie dickwad in the world.
WTF! And he forgot to mention that when cows are in heat, other cows will mount them and try to breed them. “She’s bulling” or “she’s stands to be ridden” is what farmers will say.

Comment #39: pitbullgirl65  on  12/16  at  03:21 PM

Okay, I’m safely insulated from some of this by a long-standing policy of walking away whenever people start trying to preach to me (with the exception of the girl who caught me when I was waiting for a streetlight to change and was somewhat shocked that I just ignored all religious comments and stuck cheerfully to small talk about how busy the road was), so reading this over just made me laugh.  Silly fundamentalists, books are for reading—thumping them just compresses the pages.

Comment #40: fluffster  on  12/16  at  03:54 PM

Seconding the Santorum-like nature of this, how these kinds of fundies tend to bust out all hot and bothered about what, in detail, the people they disapprove of are doing, and everyone gets kind of quiet and looks at each other, embarrassed.  Or snickering.  You almost feel sorry for them except that they are also filled with hate and shame and violence and cause so much damage.

Good riddance.

Comment #41: emjaybee  on  12/16  at  04:30 PM

Now if only Olseteen and the rest of evangelicals will be called to heaven.  Men like Oral Roberts give legitimate belief a bad name.  God is more worried about you being a good person to each other than if you’re having gay sex.  Then again, Oral roberts was a charlatan from the get-go and has even been taught in ethics classes as a classic uncaught example of evangelical charlatanism.

Comment #42: Xeranar  on  12/16  at  05:11 PM

Just saying, but I can never see that monument without picturing some of the more extreme gay fisting movies I’ve seen.

Comment #43: Lymis  on  12/16  at  05:23 PM

pentecostals are some of the most repressed fundies out there.  roberts was one of the leading lights that brought the pente’s out of the chistianist closet and onto TV.  roberts was a vile charlatan.  It’s no surprise to me the second generation are basically just grifters as well.

Comment #44: ice weasel  on  12/16  at  05:58 PM

aslkfhaskjfhakjsfajksf eeeeeeeew!

Comment #45: Rebecca  on  12/16  at  07:16 PM

To quote Moms Mabley:

“They say you shouldn’t say nothin’ about the dead unless it’s good. He’s dead. Good.”

Comment #46: Lymis  on  12/16  at  07:53 PM

And nothing of value was lost.

Also, why can this guy say “vagina” but not “penis”?

Comment #47: Devonian  on  12/16  at  11:19 PM

Wow. I couldn’t listen to all of it. Creeptastic.

It did make me think of some old Firesign Theatre though…
Yes, Friends, welcome to Pastor Flash’s our of Reckoning, with Organ Leroy at his organ again…

Comment #48: rainie  on  12/17  at  01:00 AM

My mother’s family is den of evangelicals (except my wonderful atheist/gay uncle) but they all hate Oral Roberts. He killed my great-grandmother. She sent him a donation in the early 60s and got some kind of token promising to cure her of her diabetes. She stopped taking her insulin and died.

Comment #49: louC  on  12/17  at  12:38 PM

Being a native Okie, I remember when Oral was doing healings in tent meetings in the ‘50s, which were televised on channel 10 in Ada. I was a kid, but I remember watching all the carryings-on and being skeptical and uneasy about the people fainting, crying and hollering and throwing their crutches off, etc. Oral had a forelock that hung down and he wore white shirts w/the sleeves rolled up. My family was not religious and did not attend church, partly b/c we were dirt poor and other partly b/c I dunno, maybe b/c my dad didn’t really believe that stuff either, nor my mom. But many around there did fall for it. My former MIL had been healed several times by Oral, in fact. It was a point of pride for her. I kept my mouth shut.

I see they referred to him as “Dr.” Roberts. Another phony gesture. Strictly honorary; he never earned a PhD, probably lucky if he graduated from high school. In fact, a few years back when he still had some good sense, I saw him interviewed by some other evangies, and he said that Pontotoc County, where he grew up, was named after the Pontotoc Indians. There’s no such thing. Pontotoc was a chief of the Choctaws, if I remember correctly, not a tribe. What else did he get wrong??

To my way of thinking, Oral is to blame for beginning the TV charlatanism on such a massive scale that is still going on today. His idea of “seed faith” means send him money. You plant the money seed, by sending it to him, and God rewards you according to your generosity. Yeah, right. I’ll go to the casino instead! Just for fun, I channel-surf thru the two religiousite channels I can get on basic cable, and watch for as long as it takes for them to ask for money. Usually a few seconds.

Stories have abounded for years about Oral’s habits of $100 haircuts and expensive custom-made suits. His son Richard’s first wife wrote an expose about the whole thing years ago—I read it—but she was shut up pronto, probably paid off handsomely. You don’t hear about Richard’s first marriage much, do ya? What, divorce?? I thought that was against the Bible. And one of Oral’s sons committed suicide. Rumor was that he was gay and into drugs. I dunno; I’m just passing on gossip!

Let us hope that Oral gets what he deserves in the afterlife. May we all get what we deserve.

Comment #50: JudyLou  on  12/18  at  02:15 PM
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