The Family Research Council's (FRC) Ken Blackwell has sparked the ire of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights advocates by linking the deadly Isla Vista attacks near the University of California Santa Barbara's campus to the growing acceptance of same-sex marriage.
As Right Wing Watch first reported, the FRC's senior fellow told Tony Perkins (the organization's president) that the violence was the result of “the crumbling of the moral foundation of the country” as well as the "attack on natural marriage and the family” in a "Washington Watch" broadcast.
He added, "The teaching of sexual roles and the development of human sexuality in our culture ... when these fundamental institutions are attacked and destroyed and weakened and abandoned, you get what we are now seeing, and that is a flood of disturbed people in our society."
Listen to audio of Blackwell's comments below:
Blackwell is, of course, no stranger to anti-LGBT proclamations, having once described marriage equality advocates as "opponents of natural marriage," Right Wing Watch also pointed out.
It isn't the first time that a conservative pundit has made headlines for linking the LGBT community to a tragic event or natural disaster. In 2012, Focus on the Family founder James Dobson suggested that the massacre at Connecticut's Sandy Hook Elementary School was the result of America turning its back on God.
"I mean, millions of people have decided that God doesn't exist, or He's irrelevant to me and we have killed 54 million babies and the institution of marriage is right on the verge of a complete redefinition," he said at the time. "Believe me, that is going to have consequences, too."
Earlier in 2012, conservative chaplain John McTernan suggested that both Hurricane Sandy and Hurricane Isaac were also the result of growing acceptance of LGBT causes, in particular President Barack Obama's support of same-sex marriage.
"God is systematically destroying America," McTernan wrote at the time. "Just look at what has happened this year."
Last year, Robert Ritchie, Executive Director of America Needs Fatima, a project of the right-wing American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family, and Property, linked the deadly tornadoes in Illinois to the state's approval of same-sex marriage legislation, which takes effect June 1.
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