Earthquakes caused by nudity, short skirts, gay marriage and other scapegoats
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Version 0 of 1. Natural disasters are, by definition, natural. Which might lead you to assume they are one of the few areas of life in which no one is at fault. Not so, according to some in Malaysia who blamed last week’s earthquake – in which 16 climbers died – on a British woman posing naked for pictures at the top of the country’s highest mountain. The peak is sacred, and the spirits were supposedly angered enough to unleash tremors of a 6.0 magnitude. The woman has been arrested along with three men and her lawyer has requested they are held separately amid fears for their safety. It’s not the first time that women – who, along with children, are more likely to die as a result of natural disasters than men – have been blamed for earthquakes. In 2010, a prayer leader in Tehran put Iran’s seismic activity down to the way women dress. “When promiscuity spreads, earthquakes increase,” he warned. It is worth noting that, to date, no straight white man has ever been blamed for a natural disaster. Apart from God. In the aftermath of a disaster, it can sometimes seem as if the hunt for a culprit is happening at the same time as the hunt for survivors. And way ahead of the cleanup. When Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans – killing 1,800 people and submerging 80% of the city – it wasn’t long before political and religious leaders started finger-pointing. An ultra-orthodox rabbi called it “God’s punishment for Bush’s support of the 2005 withdrawal of Jewish settlers from the Gaza strip”. Rightwing pastor Pat Robertson held legalised abortion to blame for Katrina, others said the same because the swirls on the satellite map of the hurricane resembled an image of a foetus. Meanwhile, a Northen Irish DUP politician put one of America’s five worst hurricanes in history down to a gay street festival due to take place in New Orleans when Katrina hit. Despite being deemed “unnatural” by those who hold them responsible, in the blame game otherwise known as divine retribution, it’s gay people who seem to wield the most power over natural disasters. Indeed, it’s hard to find a natural disaster that hasn’t been attributed to the LGBT community and, increasingly, their right to marry each other. Last year, Ukip councillor David Silvester (not Sylvester, sadly) said David Cameron had acted “arrogantly against the Gospel” in supporting same-sex unions and that “it is his fault that large swaths of the nation have been afflicted by storms and floods”. Fortunately, the aftermath of this manmade disaster was a deluge of mockery, with Nicholas Pegg’s spoof Radio 4 Ukip shipping forecast warning of “rain, moderate, or gay” and “homophobic outburst, back-pedalling westerly and becoming untenable”. Which you might call the most fitting example of divine retribution of all. |