The Gays Did It

This wacko says Texas was devastated by
Hurricane Harvey because The Gays Did It.

I notice this repeatedly with every disaster.

The religious nutjobs all blame The Gays whenever there's a calamity. It's like clockwork.

It's as much of a cliche as TV reporters getting blown away while yelling into a camera on a hurricane-blasted beach.

We saw "The Gays Did It" with Hurricane Harvey and we'll surely see it if Hurricane Irma turns out as bad as feared.

Here's an account from Right Wing Watch:

"Extremist anti-LGBTQ pastor Kevin Swanson is joining other radical religious right activists in declaring that Hurricane Harvey is God's judgment on Houston and other cities the refuse to repent for their embrace of 'sexual perversion.'.....

"....Swanson said it is no coincidence that Houston was hit by this storm because 'it was persecutiving pastors and churches' and recently had a 'very, very aggressively pro-homosexual mayor. On top of that, the Texas legislature recently failed ot pass a bill 'that would have prevented cross-dressing men from using the women's restrooms' because 'they wanted to encourage the abomination of men attempting to dress lie women and women to dress like men.'"

Phew! That's a lot to unpack.

I'm sure Swanson and his ilk are too snowflakey and just plain flakey to sit down with someone to see if we can pick apart their logic.

But I would love to get in the same room with him and force him to answer these questions:

If God hated the former lesbian mayor of Houston, why now with the flood? She's not the mayor anymore.

Surely, some of Harvey's victims did not vote for that former mayor and some probably supported the failed "bathroom bill" in Texas in which transgendered people would have been prevented from using restrooms that go along with their current gender.

So why were your allies victimized by Harvey and by extension God, Mr. Swanson?

The Harvey flooding and devastation was, if anything, even worse in Port Arthur and Beaumont, Texas. Those cities are pretty conservative and I think neither ever had a gay mayor (but I could be mistaken)

So why the suffering in Port Arthur and Beaumont?

Why is it always The Gays that prompt God to unleash disasters on unsuspecting cities? Why doesn't God also smite cities that have adulterers, liars, sinners, etc. Only the Gays. Makes me suspect you think God might be a self-loathing closeted gay person. Is that what you think?

Today, Right Wing Watch told us about another loathesome "preacher," Jim Bakker, who used Houston to say The Gays Did It and to hawk his line of survivalist products.

Hey, nothing like making a buck off of God's imagined wrath, right?

All this is meant to get the general public to hate gays, because The Gays seem to be causing one cataclysm after another. I can't believe that these purveyers of The Gays Did It don't realize that nobody is buying it, and everybody is laughing at them.

Probably even God is laughing at them at this point.

Even people who don't really believe The Gays Did It rejoice in bringing it up. The odious Ann Coulter got a lot of heat after Harvey when she Tweeted:

"I don't believe Hurricane Harvey is God's punishment for Houston electing a lesbian mayor. But that's more credible than 'climate change.'

Okey dokey.

The former Houston mayor, Annise Parker responded via Twitter: "Darn it, I thought no one knew I had super power over weather."

As a gay guy, I wish I did have such power.  I want to be one of the gays among those Gays Who Did It. Of course I would never want to unleash a disaster on anyone, including these weird "religious" nutcases. Nice weather for everyone, but with enough well-timed rain to prevent droughts.

I'd make exceptions, though. For the Gays Did It preachers and hucksters and swindlers, I would impose on them a lifetime of  low, dark overcast, fog and freezing drizzle. And nothing else.

There's plenty of real-life blame to go around for weather disaster. It's legitimate to blame the randomness of nature, bad luck, poor planning and development decisions, recklessness, even global warming.

We all know that most of us wouldn't want to make deadly disasters worse than they already are. Most of us have an impulse to help, which explains the many millions of dollars from so many Americans that are pouring into Texas for hurricane relief.

A few people like to make things worse, though. Or at least more bizarre. Like The Gays Did It crowd.

They're their own weird little disaster.

Wacko Who Said Floods Are God's Punishment For Gays Is Flooded Out Of His House. TG

Tony Perkins took this photo of his badly flooded
Louisiana home as he and his family escaped.
In the past, Perkins has agreed with those who said big
floods were God's wrath because gay people exist. 

I found it odd that, unlike in every previous horrible weather disaster, I didn't hear from the extreme religious wackos that the huge Louisiana flood happened because God is annoyed gay people exist.

One possible explanation for the lack of damnation talk with the flood is that one of many people whose houses was trashed by the Louisiana flood is a guy named Tony Perkins,

Perkins is President of the Family Research Council, a notoriously anti-gay conservative activist group.

While Perkins has never been the leading voice of the "God created this disaster because he hates gays" he at least agrees with the sentiment. According to Snopes, he was interviewing Paster Jonathan Cahn last October after a storm caused terrible flooding in South Carolina.

Cahn said the flood was God's anger that the United States legalized gay marriage, and Perkins agreed that God was trying to send a message.

(What was left unexplained that if God hated gay marriage so much, why did He unleash the flood on South Carolina, one of the most conservative places in the nation.)

I confess I'm a bit guilty of schadenfreude, though I really am not that pleased that Perkins' house was wrecked. Like all flood victims in Louisiana, he needs our support.

Still, I find it interesting that Perkins didn't say anything about God's anger. He called the disaster a flood of near biblical proportions, which is true, and said this was an opportunity for Christians to help others in need, which of course is a refreshingly good thing for Perkins to say.

I also noticed the home page of the Family Research Council web site has a large block asking people to donate toward Louisiana flood relief.

Perkins, his wife and five children escaped from their flooded house via a large canoe. An RV on their property was undamaged, so they will stay in that until their home is repaired.

And no, I definitely don't think God is punishming Perkins for being so virulently homophobic.

Fearmongering Is Behind The Orlando Atrocity And Many Others

People outside the Pulse nightclub massacre in
Orlando today. 

Everything about the Orlando mass shooting is about fear.

Obviously, the shooter, Omar Mateen, wanted to instill fear, directly on the people who were in the Pulse nightclub, and other people in general.  

Like me. And many others, of course. Probably everybody.

Mateen targeted gay people in a gay nightclub when he killed at least 50 people and injured dozens more early this morning.

Most readers of this blog know I'm gay, and married to what I and a lot of other people know to be one of the best, kindest men on the planet.

Most people support us, love us, or like us, or at least are perfectly willing to leave me and Jeff alone and let us live our life. This is as it should be.

Not everybody likes my sexual orientation. Or Jeff's. That's perfectly fine. Nobody owes us. Nobody has to like us just because me and Jeff exist.

The vast majority of people who don't like my sexual orientation  don't bring up the subject, or ignore us, or avoid us, and go on with their lives. And they let us go on with our lives. These are not fearful people.

Unfortunately, the world is full of fearful people. They're not in the majority, obviously. But this fearful subset cannot handle anyone or anything that is not like them.  So you get what you got today in Orlando.

People outside the Pulse nightclub shooting
in Orlando early today.  

To this fearful group, anyone who  is of a different race, has a different sexual orientation, adheres to a different religion, or has differing political viewpoints than theirs is to be avoided. Killed. Wiped off the face of the Earth like the scary spider in my kitchen sink that startled me this morning.

Of course, the consequences are far, far, far greater than a spider.  And the fear creates a worldwide spider web of hate and murder.

Omar Mateen was not born hating gay people. Somebody taught him to do that.  Somebody who fancied themselves a leader, who created the fear in Mateen that led him to do what he did.

NBC News reported that two months ago, Mateen became angry when he saw two men kissing in Miami.

It triggered the fear in Mateen - that toxic stew in Mateen's head brewed for two months until he killed all those people, who were just out for a good time.

Whoever instilled the fear in Omar Mateen knows their efforts worked.

I'm not letting Mateen off the hook here. He made the decision to kill all those people in the Orlando nightclub. He's no victim.

There are others, though, who had an indirect hand in this outrage, and in every other terrorist incident I can think of -- from 9/11 to Brussels and Paris and Charleston and Oklahoma City and countless others.

There are a number of people who call themselves leaders who exploit the fear they placed in the heads of people llike Mateen.  Pump them up. Encourage the fear.

That's because these so-called leaders really don't have any real solutions to any problems. Or, they're just trying to amass power.

The way to do that is to incite fear.

Nobody makes good decisions when they're fearful. Fearful people are easily led. Or more accurately, easily led astray.

So called leaders who exploit fear know that doing so distracts the fearful from the real issue, or from the real bad stuff these "leaders" are up to.

People who exploit fear know creating scapegoats can cow the masses, and let these "leaders"  get away with whatever they're up to.

That creates a population that hates gays. Or Muslims. Or Christians. Or women. Or Jews. Remember Hitler? He was the world's greatest master at exploiting fear by targeting Jews. The greatest masters at this cause the world's greatest tragedies. Like the Holocaust.

Fifty people dead in an Orlando nightclub is horrific, but obviously not anywhere close to the level of the Holocaust.

But the same fear exploiting playbook was at work here.

Fear and anger are close cousins. Fearful animals often lash out at what makes them fearful. Terrorize a dog and it might bite you out of fear. '

People are the same way. Mateen was fearful and lashed out.

Fear and anger mestasize like cancer.  Mateen knew his actions would make people fearful and angry, and they did. I'm fearful and angry over this, because that's the natural human reaction.

But remember, like I said, fear and anger make us irrational, and I think Mateen knew that on some level.

So called leaders know this. And they'll exploit Orlando just like they exploited so many other terrorist incidents. Because that's what they do. Each outrage lets them build on others.

They'll try to whip up the population. Let's ban Muslims! The gays deserved it! Let's take people's freedoms of speech and assembly and due process away in the name of combating terrorism!

Some leaders will do this out of genuine concern for our well being and that of the nation. A smaller number of other leaders will do that to continue amassing power, and screwing the rest of us.

I'm gay, so Orlando proves that I have a target on my back. I'm fearful and angry, yes.

But please, let's all try to rise above this fear and anger, and think rationally. Yes, we need to super aggressively go after the bad guys and gals, and the people who inspire them to kill and terrorize.

Let's also escape the fear cocoon that keeps us fearful of everybody that's different from us. The best antidote to fear is knowledge.

Knowledge is power. Fear is weakeness.   Instead of hiding away from what we don't like, try to understand it. Learn about it. What makes those who are "different" from us tick.

Once we get to know these "different" people, religions, orientations and such, we still might not like them. But I bet the knowledge will make us less likely to lash out in fear.

It's everybody's responsibility to do this. The nation's and the world's top leaders must do this. You and I must do this.

I don't think we'll ever stop these terrorist tragedies. But if we rise above the fear, and embrace facts and knowledge, I bet we can reduce the number of these atrocities and the level of death and suffering.

We have to. It's our only hope.

Stupid Guy Wants To Secede From U.S.; Create Anti-Gay Nation Called Reagan

A bizarre man named Douglas MacKinnon
would carve out a new, conservative country
from the southern U.S. and maybe
call the new nation "Reagan" after his hero.  

I don't know whether to laugh out loud or get deep chills from the idea making the rounds by a guy named Douglas MacKinnon.

He thinks it will be a swell idea of southern states secede from the union and form a new country called "Reagan."

He's got a whole book out on the subject called "The Secessionist States of America: The Blueprint for Creating A Traditional Values Country...Now."

Yes, I know this has been tried before with tragic results, but maybe MacKinnon thinks two times is the charm.

Besides, that little matter called the Civil War in the 1860s was the North's fault, anyway, MacKinnon says, according to Right Wing Watch. 

He said greedy Northerners like President Lincoln "waged an illegal war that was in fact not declared against the South after the South basically did what we're talkin sbout in this book now in terms of peacefully, legally and constitutionally leaving the union."

Yeah, I know. Slavery is such a traditional value.

It's a bit odd that MacKinnon gets his inspiration for his new nation, called Reagan, from Abraham Lincoln, given he was a commie pinko who held the nation together despite the Civil War.

MacKinnon quotes Honest Abe to give his rationale for his new nation. "This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it."

I guess he thinks a good reason to overthrow the government is because not everyone votes Republican like he does.

In MacKinnon's view, the real problem with the current state of affairs is The Gays. It's always The Gays. You can't even discriminate against or insult The Gays anymore without being forced to bake cakes for them or tell the world what great football players, it seems.

MacKinnon's solution is to secede and form a country where it's OK to Hate The Gays. That'll teach 'em!

To form his new country of Reagan, MacKinnon would start with the supposedly conservative strong holds of South Carolina, Georgia and Florida.

You'd think he'd include Texas, but probably not, he says,  because of all those icky brown people from Mexico coming over the border. Traditional values are white, not Hispanic, you understand.

I'm not sure what he'd do with South Beach in Florida, what with all those hideous Gays, Hispanics and Liberals. And aren't there gay bars in Atlanta? What would he do with those?  

There hasn't been uniform praise for MacKinnon's book on Amazon's customer review page.

Here's a bit of sarcasm  from somebody calling himself "Better Than Jesus," pretending to be a big fan of MacKinnon and his book: 

"As a frothing desperate, impotent, fat self-righteous 40 year old infant with a world view so simplistic it might as well have been drawn in crayon, I am constantly on the lookout for shrieking noise that confirms the divisive lunacy on which I base my sense of self.

I felt the first stirrings of an ideological erection when I read about how climate change is a communist conspiracy, and even gained some small sense of priapic emotion from wallowing in contrived paranoid fantasies about black presidents and birth certificates, but have never been able to truly achieve the climax of faux-conservative gibbering that I, and my wife-sister craved."

MacKinnon said he worked with people from Special Ops, intelligence, the military and constitutional law to gather information for his book. 

Which makes me wonder if MacKinnon wants to start some type of war to get his dream country of Reagan. This is where I spit out my Diet Coke, stop laughing at him and get my little chill.

Have you read Margaret Atwood's scary 1998 novel "The Handmaid's Tale"? It's about a future ultra conservative nation carved out from America through a civil war. In it, women are used just as vessels to create children, and to serve the household. The book explores all kinds of other extreme right wing fantasies, kind of like MacKinnon's dreaming up.

So yea, MacKinnon is a lunatic, and his proposal won't go anywhere. But to think there are quite a few people out there who agree with him is unsettling to say the least. 

The Hurricane Sandy Wacko Brigade

Last week,  I mentioned those weird conspiracy theories about President Obama and how he somehow controlled the path of Hurricane Sandy.

This destruction in New Jersey was caused by gay people,
evidently. Photo by Tim Larsen, N.J. Governor's office

Huge storms like Sandy always bring out the wackiest of the wackos, saying the wackiest things to distract us from our worries about the storm, and more importantly, gain a tidy profit for themselves.

Now that the storm has passed, the blame game has begun.  Mostly gay people and those who insufficiently support Isreal caused all this death and destruction, we're told.

The always helpful Joe Jervis at the Joe.My.God blog has been cataloging some of the people who don't offer us some creative theories as to why Sandy caused such heartache and destruction and how we can prevent this in the future.

I'm sure storm victims are thinking the same thing I am: If these losers really want to help, they should just shut up. But, of course they won't.

We begin our exploration of our Hurricane Sandy wacko brigade with Cindy Jacobs, who instructed us before Sandy hit  on how to pray the storm away from the East Coast.

Jacobs had a lot of prayers up her sleeves that she thought would work, as quoted by Jervis:

"Rebuke this storm in Jesus' name. The authority of the believer is powerful enough to shift weather patterns! (Matthew 17:20). Declare that the Prince of Peace reigns over this hurricane, and that His peace will cause the storm to diminish. (Isaiah 9:6).  Pray that this storm will not disrupt our Reformation Day prayer initiatives in the eastern states. (Isaiah 54:17).  Pray that the Lord would protect every person on the eastern coast, and that there would be no fatalities or serious injuries. (Psalm 91; It would also be good to declare this passage of scripture over the eastern states.)  Worship God for his provision, protection, and peace in the midst of storms. (Psalm 59:16)."

Somehow, as we know now, her prayers didn't work. Maybe her prayer recipe went bad. Or she was praying to the wrong god. Or God was so annoyed by her he made the storm worse to spite her. I guess we'll never know.

Big storms are always gay peoples' fault.  Every time there's a bad storm, The Gays did it. As if God was going to kill perfectly nice and heterosexual people because other people on the other side of the country are minding their own business, but are gay.  Because the straight people should have worked harder to convert gay people to straight? Even though that's not even possible?

Predictably, a virulently anti-gay rabbi in New York, surrounded by residents of a city stunned and mourning over the damage to their area, said of course it was The Gays fault that the city and the surrounding region were trashed, Jervis noted yesterday.

Of course, the guy who was helping the rabbi perhaps the most in his efforts to overturn gay marriage in New York was a guy named Michael Long. Long's home was destroyed in the hurricane. It's terrible that happened, and I feel bad for the guy, but if God was mad at The Gays for everything, why did the hurricane destroy a home of sonebody who was supposedly on his side?

Another guy, somebody named Pastor John McTernan, really throws the kitchen sink at this issue and blames The Gays, and people who don't like Israel, or something in this incredibly dense  blog post he wrote

"Just last August, Hurricane Isaac hit New Orleans seven years later, on the exact day of Hurricane Katrina. Both hit during the week of the homosexual event called Southern Decadence in New Orleans! Hurricane Sandy is hitting 21 years to the day of the Perfect Storm of October 20, 1991.  America has been under God’s judgment since this event. Both of these hurricanes were cause by freakish weather patterns that came together to create. Twenty-one years breaks down to 7 x 3, which is a significant number with God. Three is perfection as the Godhead is three in one while seven is perfection. It appears that God gave America 21 years to repent of interfering with His prophetic plan for Israel; however, it has gotten worse under all the presidents and especially Obama. Obama is 100 percent behind the Muslim Brotherhood which has vowed to destroy Israel and take Jerusalem. Both candidates are pro-homosexual and are behind the homosexual agenda. America is under political judgment and the church does not know it!"

Whew! That's quite a spew of words, isn't it?   I can't follow it, either.

I love how he came up with those random numbers to explain why God wrought Hurricane Sandy on us  But anybody can make up their own number system. Here, I'll try:

My birth date is 9/9/62.  Hurricane Sandy hit on 10/29/12. There's two nines in my birth date, so the storm hit on the 29th, see, two nines. There's two twos in the date 10/29/12,  so that proves that I'm the one who created Hurricane Sandy and steered it into the East Coast.

Or not.

As it turns out, every hurricane to affect the United States apparently comes at moments when we are insufficiently pro-Israel, according to a lot of these wackos. They explain it all to us at World Net Daily:

The "Long Island Express" Hurricane of 1938 came as the Nazis were consolidating power and we should have stopped them then.

"The Perfect Storm" of 1991 came when then President George H.W Bush was at some conference at Madrid where he was being insufficiently pro-Israel, according to WND

Katrina in 2005 came for the same reason. Apparently, the president was congratulating Israel for evacuating Gaza or something.  So a minor day politically pissed off God so much he trashed an American city unrelated to Israeli politics. Makes perfect sense.

Now that we've established that The Gays and the not supportive enough of Isreal are causing bad weather, who's causing good weather?