UK Politician Says Marriage Equality Caused The Country’s Floods, Proving Wing Nuts Are Everywhere

If you think the United States has a monopoly on right wing lunacy, consider the case of British politician David Silvester. In a jeremiad that would do Pat Robertson proud, Silvester has written to a local paper to insist that recent floods in Great Britain are a direct result of marriage equality.

“The scriptures make it abundantly clear that a Christian nation that abandons its faith and acts contrary to the Gospel (and in naked breach of a coronation oath) will be beset by natural disasters such as storms, disease, pestilence and war,” Silverster wrote. “I wrote to [Prime Minister] David Cameron in April 2012 to warn him that disasters would accompany the passage of his same-sex marriage bill. But he went ahead despite a 600,000-signature petition by concerned Christians and more than half of his own parliamentary party saying that he should not do so. It is his fault that large swathes of the nation have been afflicted by storms and floods.”

In a totally unnecessary addendum, Silvester said that no one “can mess with Almighty God with impunity and get away with it.”

Silvester then upped the ante by doing a radio interview in which he claimed homosexuality can be cured. “My prayer for them is they will be healed,” he said in the interview. “It is nonsense to say it is homophobic. If you love a person enough to want them to be healed and to have a proper family, that is hardly homophobic. It is a spiritual disease.”

There is one difference between the UK and the U.S., however. In the U.S. Silvester would be celebrated by his party and quite possibly encouraged to run for president. As a result of his comment in the UK, however, the UK Independence Party suspended Silvester from its ranks. 

Photo credit: Henley Conservatives website