Extremists Deem Katrina Punishment By God

I've been sickened by the number of people who have seized upon the disaster wrought by Hurricane Katrina to support their particular hatred. Christian Fundamentalists and Muslim Extremists alike have found ways to blame their particular grievances on the “wickedness” of New Orleans. So far the only group that has been spared has been African Americans, who have not thus far been blamed as the cause for Hurrican Katrina by the Ku Klux Klan (although there have been some rumblings that the extent of the looting is because New Orleans is predominantly black).

Gays were the first to blamed for the apparent Divine Judgement wrought upon New Orleans.

“...this act of God destroyed a wicked city,” said Repent America director Michael Marcavage on the Repent America Web site. “From Girls Gone Wild to Southern Decadence, New Orleans was a city that had its doors wide open to the public celebration of sin. May it never be the same.”

“...we believe that God is in control of the weather. The day Bourbon Street and the French Quarter was flooded was the day that 125,000 homosexuals were going to be celebrating sin in the streets. We're calling it an act of God.”

According to Franklin Graham, son of famous Evangelist Billy Graham, “This happens in our country when we have taken God out of our schools and God out of our, out of society. We don't have a moral standard.”

Marie Jon', Conservative commentator, says; “Open your eyes and see that lawlessness and neglect comes from a nation that has pushed the almighty aside and told it's people that the Ten Commandments are really a relic and a man made myth!”

That's just the tip of the iceberg in the blame game that is currently being directed at Gays. The gist of the Christan Conservative and Evangelical argument is based upon the usual distortion of facts. Basically, God destroyed New orleans because it was about to host a Gay event called Southern Decadence. They also claim that the hurricane struck on the day of the event.

The facts (and points):

1) The hurricane struck on Monday, August 29. This year's Southern Decadence, sometimes called the “Gay Mardi Gras,” was scheduled to open on the 31st, and continue through September 4th. The storm obviously did not strike on “the day” of the celebration. Many, perhaps most, of the revelers had not even arrived yet.

2) Southern Decadence is a 35-year-old tradition in New Orleans. Why did God choose to wait till 2005 to “punish” the city for it?

3) Why is the French Quarter, the district where the event (now canceled) was to be held, one of the least devastated parts of the city so far?

4) If this tragedy occurred because God is angry at New Orleans, what was the point of the awful devastation and loss of life wrought in Mississippi and Alabama?

Gays are not the only group of people who have been blamed for Katrina, however. Abortionists have been singled out, as well.

“In my belief, God judged New Orleans for the sin of shedding innocent blood through abortion,” said Steve Lefemine, director of anti-abortion group Columbia Christians for Life, who apparently discerned an image of a fetus in satellite photographs of the storm. He e-mailed the flesh-toned weather map to fellow activists across the country and put a stark message on the answering machine of his organization. “Providence punishes national sins by national calamities,” it said. “Greater divine judgment is coming upon America unless we repent of the national sin of abortion.”

Also blamed was America's support of Isreal's withdrawal from the Gaza strip.

“Whenever this country encourages Israel to give up any part of their rightful God-given land we have suffered the consequences,” wrote a discussion-board participant on the Web site of the Christian Broadcasting Network.

Not be left out, Muslim exremists have jumped on the bandwagon.

“It is almost certain that this is a wind of torment and evil that Allah has sent to this American empire,” a Kuwaiti official, Muhammad Yousef Mlaifi, wrote Wednesday in the Arabic daily Al-Siyassa under the headline “The Terrorist Katrina is One of the Soldiers of Allah ... ”

I'm disgusted by all of it. This to me is nothing more than the verbal equivalent of the rapes, murders and lootings that have been going on in New Orleans. When a group of Americans are on their knees and at their most desperate, it is our duty as human beings (first and foremost) and as Americans to reach out to our brethren and do everything possible to help them to get back on their feet again. It is not the time to build the strength and momentum of your agenda upon the bodies of the dead that still float in the waters in New Orleans, upon the life-long scars inflicted by the victims of rapes, and upon the memories of those who have died at the hands of the lawless.

When I heard of the things that have been happening in New Orleans (the looting, rapes and murders), my first thought was that human beings are animals, and in the absence of the force of law man will resort to his natural state. In my opinion these people who are using this incredible disaster to support their political viewpoints are no better than the man who raped and murdered a young girl in a bathroom in the New Orleans Superdome.

The difference is that a crowd of people found that man and they beat him to death for what he had done. I fear that no retribution will be forthcoming with the filth who use this tragedy for their own purposes. In fact, their arguments seem to carry weight with an uncomfortably high number of Americans.

I will close with a quote from an article that, for me, sums up what this tragedy is all about. I hope that in some small way this might create an image for you that might contradict what I posted above, and will be the single image that you carry away with you concerning Hurricane Katrina.

“And then there is the TV reporter who met a distraught man in the aftermath of the storm. He told her how his house had broken in two. How he tried to hold onto his wife as the storm and the water raged. How she told him, ‘You can't hold me’ and asked him to take care of the kids and the grandkids. How he lost his grip and she was swept away.

“The man was crying as he told the story and it seemed as if the reporter was weeping, too. For the record, he was black and she was white and I wouldn't be surprised if there were also other differences between them. But in that moment, they were just two human beings met at an intersection of inconsolable loss.

“There are times when nothing else matters.”

Amen.


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