They're at it again. The right-wing fundies and their Republican bedmates are telling us what God is doing, and why He's doing it.
For instance, as pointed out on Pam's House Blend blog, the chaplain of the High Desert State Prison just wrote an article for a California newspaper explaining that the number of earthquakes and environmental disasters has been increasing due to gay and abortion rights proponents. The chaplain warns America that if gays continue to gain rights, we will see more disasters, bad weather, and environment crises--because God is angry, and God has decided to act on it.
Of course, for years now Jerry Falwell has blamed liberal activists for nearly every hurricane and earthquake, as has Pat Robertson, whose latest was a prediction of God-created natural catastrophes for the town of Dover, Pennsylvania, which recently reinstalled evolution into their high school curriculum after a group of ill-informed right-wingers threw it out. (The weather in Dover has been excellent since.) There was a time when people who felt they had a direct line to God, or Thor, or Napoleon, were placed in institutions. Now, they are running the country.
It never seems to occur to these people that plenty of bad weather happens to red states, and that plenty of good weather happens to liberals.
And why is it always the weather? Is the Hand of God the Hand of a Meteorologist? If He were truly angry, couldn't He find more devastating ways of showing it? The Bible is filled with extraordinary examples of Divine Interference--after all, it's not as if Abraham was told to force Isaac to stand outside in really heavy rain.
In fact, aren't these people actually dissing God? Aren't they saying that, when God is angry, the best He can do is muster up a low frontal system off the Atlantic, or an earthquake that registers 3.1 on the Richter scale?
And what about countries like Canada, or Belgium, or Sapin, where gay marriage is legal? These countries are doing just fine: no bad weather, no earthquakes, nothing. Does God only care about America? Has he subcontracted the weather around the globe to more liberal-minded associates?
Strangely, the right wing had absolutely nothing to say about the following story. Last week, Lynn Stanley, who was leading the effort to ban gay marriage in Arizona, died in a terrible car crash. Says Azcentral.com: "Stanley's death cast a pall over what was to be a joyous time for the Protect Marriage coalition... The group planned to submit its petitions Wednesday, with Stanley on hand to celebrate the accomplishment. Her death has led the initiative to delay its submittal until Thursday, the deadline to turn in signatures."
Any accident that takes a person's life is a tragedy. Although Stanley was one of Arizona's most outspoken fundamentalist extremists, she leaves behind a family and loved ones. Nobody deserves such a fate.
Yet anytime a gay or pro-choice proponent dies in an untimely fashion, the right-wing is all too happy to claim that God has spoken. Now, they are silent--which is what they should be, all the time, about all catastrophes. No one should ever use a tragedy to political advantage. Earthquakes, car accidents, hurricanes--all of them involve real people suffering real heartbreak. God works in mysterious ways. He doesn't work for Republicans.