It takes some massive blind spots to play the "This awful natural disaster is occurring in this place because They Have Sinned Against The Lord," but that doesn't keep dolts like Kevin Swanson from doing so.
Like, for example, hey, Kev — why does God pay such strict attention to state lines? I mean, why punish California as a whole? Why not, I don't know, punish individual counties based on their voting records or number of gay people or something? I mean, a lot of these fires are happening in some pretty conservative / rural areas of the state — why is God punishing them for the sins of the more liberal population centers?
I'm not sure if I'm more disturbed thinking that Swanson is just a "God must hate the people I hate" sort who can't actually figure out the huge logic gaps in his analysis (let alone his theology), or if he's a publicity hound looking to boost his ratings no matter who it hurts.
Kevin Swanson: ‘God Is Burning Down California’ As Punishment For Legitimizing Homosexuality | Right Wing Watch
Radical anti-LGBTQ radio host and pastor Kevin Swanson said on his
I read some related quotes. This guy is a serious scumbag.
Nice pick of angle, lights and almost feminine expression for the portrait of this handsome man. Anyway, there should be statutes against this particular form of discourse and a few related ones. Religious freedom should be the freedom of Californians not to face this form of insults.
The time lapse is also mystifying. Punishment for things that began to take place while Dianne Feinstein was a rising star is now being fulfilled as her own party rejects her?
+John E. Bredehoft You are attempting to apply that Foul Demon Logic! Get thee behind me, Commenter!
+Boris Borcic I'm always reluctant to legislatively rein in such speech, if only because it provides precedent for reining in other speech that the Powers In Charge think is disrespectful or insulting.
Better to mock and ridicule, at least at this level.
+Dave Hill Well, it's maybe illusory but I've this intuition that an idiosyncratic enough argument is relatively safe… and if not, possibly informative to just assemble. Here, the aim would be a solid model of what religious freedom can sanely be, drawn from first principles, and such that declarations that such or such catastrophe is God punishing some body politic for some freedom it promotes among its members, while there's not a shadow of God-exempt causal link, breaks law.