Bobby Jindal To Kick Off Run For President By Blaming Gays For Hurricane Katrina Deaths

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal is counting on his religious extremism – and hatred of gay people – to pave his White House run.

Since he’s been the Republican Governor of Louisiana, Bobby Jindal has made clear he’s extremely anti-gay. Take comments he made just two years ago while stumping for the National Organization For Marriage (NOM) and Rick Santorum’s Patriot Voices, claiming that same-sex marriage is a slippery-slope to repeal of the Second Amendment. 

“The reality is today we’re talking about redefining marriage,” he told a tiny crowd. “If the court is allowed to impose and write their own laws and their own views, and overturn those that are done by our duly-elected representatives, what’s to stop today’s [indistinguishable]. Tomorrow it may be property rights, maybe it’s Second Amendment rights. We have got to take a stand against judicial activism.”

Huh?

Can you say, “dog whistle politics”?

Bobby Jindal knows his audience.

Or take, for example, Jindal’s plan to kick off his White House run in January.

Pulling a page straight out of Rick Perry’s playbook, Jindal will hold a National Day of Pray at a 13,215-seat arena in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. In preparation for the event, Jindal sent out a “National Invitation” on his taxpayer-funded State of Louisiana embossed stationery, complete with the seal of the Office of the Governor. How this is legal – or at least, ethical – is anyone’s guess.

“We are in need of spiritual and transforming revival, if we are to recapture the vision of our early leaders who signed on the Mayflower, ‘In the name of God and for the advancement of the Christian faith,'” the very first paragraph reads.”

 

This, of course, should make atheists, Muslims, and people of other, no, or undecided faith feel very comfortable.

Worse, however, is that, as Right Wing Watch notes, “the virulently anti-gay Christian nationalist American Family Association, influential Religious Right leader David Lane and Doug Stringer, a self-proclaimed ‘apostle’ from Texas who has blamed America’s rejection of God for the September 11 attacks, are spearheading Jindal’s Baton Rouge rally.”

RWW adds, “Jindal’s prayer rally appears to be so closely modeled after Perry’s that its organizers are even reusing materials from the 2011 Texas event, including a prayer guide…”

And that prayer guide blames gay people, abortion, and sin for the deaths of the 1833 people who died as a result of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, along with the deaths of people who died as a result of tornadoes.

“The crisis is extreme and the hour is urgent,” Day 2 of the prayer guide warns. Pointing to “a massive locust plague” that destroyed Israel in biblical times, the guide claims “these plagues came was because of the peopleʼs negligence to worship and serve God with their whole heart. Because the people grew cold and eventually departed from God, they experienced incredible hardships.”

So, of course, the guide claims it is logical to affix this biblical story to today’s times. 

“In America today we face a similar crisis. We have watched sin escalate to a proportion the nation has never seen before,” it claims. “We live in the first generation in which the wholesale murder of infants through abortion is not only accepted but protected by law. Homosexuality has been embraced as an alternative lifestyle. Same-sex marriage is legal in six states and Washington, D.C. Pornography is available on-demand through the internet. Biblical signs of apostasy are before our very eyes. While the United States still claims to be a nation ‘under God’ it is obvious that we have greatly strayed from our foundations in Christianity.”

And yes, Jindal’s minions did not bother to update the materials. Six states have grown to over thirty. 

“This year,” it continues, “we have seen a dramatic increase in tornadoes that have taken the lives of many and crippled entire cities, such as Tuscaloosa, AL & Joplin, MO. And let us not forget that we are only six years from the tragic events of hurricane Katrina, which rendered the entire Gulf Coast powerless.”

By all means, let’s blame “the gays,” same-sex marriage, abortion, secularism, atheists, and pornography for the deaths of the 1833 Katrina victims, plus countless hundreds or thousands more. 

Attacking wide swaths of Americans is rarely good politics, unless you think you can count on just your base to win.

 

Image: “Atmosphere at the ‘Astrodome’ stadium filled with refugees from Louisiana in Houston, Texas, USA, on September 3, 2005.” Photo by Ammar Abd Rabbo via Flickr

Hat tip: Raw Story