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Titled, The Rhetoric of Intolerance: An Open-Letter Video to Pat Robertson from Dr. Mel White, this video provides a point-by-point destruction of Robertson's homophobic social and religious paradigm. Throughout the 1970s, '80s, and '90s, Pat Robertson--founder of the Christian Broadcasting Network [CBN], Regent University, and the conservative American Center for Law and Justice, and one of the loudest voices in the Religious Right--spread a relentlessly homophobic message through his television program, The 700 Club. Mel White, a closeted gay man who ghost wrote autobiographies for such homophobic Christian fundamentalists as Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and Billy Graham, came out in 1994 and became an outspoken queer activist associated with the Metropolitan Community Church. For documentary materials associated with The Rhetoric of Intolerance ..., see MS-00802, box 8 ["Discrimination - The Rhetoric of Intolerance"] in the University of Nevada, Las Vegas' Special Collections Department. [00:00:00 - 00:30:03]
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Sharon Maurer-Schwartz was born May 15, 1939 in Indianapolis, Indiana. She was raised in a Jewish household, yet she has belonged to various types of synagogues. She met her partner, Edna Rice in the 1980s, but were not able to legally marry each other until 2008 in California. They moved to Las Vegas, Nevada in 1999 to raise Maurer-Schwartz’s daughter Julie. She dedicated her life to being a life coach and owning her own business, Growth Unlimited.
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Irene Fisher was born in New York, New York; October 14, 1940. Fisher moved to Nevada in 1971 following her husband Barry Fisher, who was stationed at Nellis Air Force Base. It was the early 1970s and as a young mother she found the best path to being a part of the community was to connect with the Jewish community. She joined Temple Beth Sholom, was active in Sisterhood and served on the Clark County Public Library Board (1975-1983.) Her children are Stacey Fisher and Scott Fisher.
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