A brief history of blaming the gays

Destroying marriage and controlling the weather

The Pennsylvania preacher who blamed Hurricane Sandy on “the homosexual agenda”  was not only wildly offensive, but also completely unoriginal. Indeed, if you believe right-wing evangelicals, LGBT people only take time off from destroying marriage in order to control the weather.

And while we can destroy traditional marriage all on our own, we provoke God to use the weather to destroy entire cities — including killing, injuring and damaging property owned by straight people, and even by conservative religious straight people — just to teach America a lesson about us.

As we offer our deepest concern and sympathy for all of those impacted by Hurricane Sandy, we take a look back at just a few of the more memorable storms for which our community has been scapegoated.

While these anti-gay pastors may seem funny, the actual storms and the devastation they cause are not funny at all. It’s also not funny how many politicians, while not agreeing with the hurricane/gays theory, still pander to that ilk for votes.

(We also point out that when Janis Walworth of ChristianGays.com took a satirical, pseudo-scientific look at “Do Gays Cause Hurricanes?” what she actually found is a correlation between religion and tornadoes.)

Hurricane Sandy (2012)

John McTernan, blogging at http://defendproclaimthefaith.org/blog/, not only blames gay people, those who are “pro-homosexual,” and the “homosexual agenda,” for Hurricane Sandy, he somehow misses the significance of his own home being right in the path of the storm.

Hurricane Isaac (2012)

New Orlean’s Southern Decadence gay weekend allegedly has the power to prompt multiple hurricanes. (See below about Hurricane Katrina).

The esteemed Pastor McTernan was one of the Bible-toting wannabe meteorologists who blamed Hurricane Isaac on the gays, as did the American Family Association’s Buster Wilson, among others.

Hurricane Katrina (2006)

Plenty of preachers blamed gays for Hurricane Katrina’s destruction of New Orleans: that the storm coincided with Southern Decadence, the annual Labor Day weekend gay gathering, made the comparison almost too easy. They never explained why the poor folks of the rest of Louisiana and Mississippi — areas not exactly known for LGBT tolerance — were also required to suffer.

“New Orleans had a level of sin that was offensive to God,” Pastor John Hagee said, typical of other similar remarks. His was more significant since he had endorsed Sen. John McCan in the 2008 presidential race, and McCain said he was “glad to have” the support.

The super anti-gay Repent America was also among those getting in on the blame.

Hurricanes in general (1998)

Perhaps the best known linkage of gays to hurricanes came from Pat Robertson, who in 1998 railed against Gay Days at Disney on his show, “The 700 Club,” warning the city of Orlando to remember “you’re right in the way of some serious hurricanes.” (Not to mention will bring “terrorist bombs, … earthquakes, tornadoes and possibly a meteor.”)

If you are wondering how our gay love manages to cause massive storms, Stephen Colbert explains it to you here.