Rightwing podcaster suggests Hurricane Hilary is God’s punishment for drag queens

Far-right commentator Tim Pool suggested on his podcast that California’s recent earthquake and Hurricane Hilary, which hit the U.S. and Mexico’s west coasts on Sunday and Monday, were possibly God’s punishment for drag nuns being honored by the LA Dodgers.

“It is kinda crazy, dontcha think, like when was the last time you heard about Los Angeles being hit by a hurricane?” he asked on a broadcast this week while showing a screenshot of an article about Dodgers Stadium being flooded on screen. “I don’t know man, it’s- If someone came to me and said that they believe this is the, uh, this is God’s wrath, I’m gonna be like, ‘Well look, coincidences can happen – I’m fairly agnostic, I do believe in God.”

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The popular and powerful televangelist said the U.S. has “broken the covenant that God made with mankind.”

“I just gotta tell you, ya know, a month-and-a-half or two months after they do this drag nun thing, a city that never gets hit by hurricanes, gets hit by an earthquake and a hurricane!” Pool bellowed. “And I’m kinda just like, ooooohhhhh.”

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The incident he was referring to actually started three months ago when the LA Dodgers planned a Pride Night and announced that they would honor the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, an LGBTQ+ charitable organization founded in 1979 that has raised money for LGBTQ+ causes. The group’s members dress as nuns to counteract the Catholic Church’s rejection of LGBTQ+ people – many of the Sisters are Catholics or former Catholics – and other marginalized individuals. The group is known especially for being active during the HIV epidemic, when Sisters ministered and fundraised for the sick. More recently, the Sisterhood has worked to address homelessness, especially among transgender youth.

Some people on the right – including Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and anti-LGBTQ+ activist Bill Donohue – complained about the Dodgers honoring the Sisters, and the Dodgers withdrew the honor, leading to widespread criticism from LGBTQ+ people. The Dodgers then reversed their decision, apologized, and invited the Sisters back.

Pool is far from the first person to imply that God cares about their selective outrage at random LGBTQ+ events. In 2017, pastor Kevin Swanson claimed that Hurricane Harvey, which devastated Houston, Texas, was punishment for “sexual perversion” because Annise Parker served as mayor of the city up until 2016, and she’s a lesbian. God, apparently, needed all three of Parker’s terms and an extra year of her being out of office to punish the city for electing her.

Reverend John Hagee, the evangelical pastor of a “mega-church” in Texas, was quoted in an interview in 2006 saying that “God caused Hurricane Katrina to wipe out New Orleans because it had a gay pride parade the week before and was filled with sexual sin.”

Televangelist Pat Robertson and evangelical leader Jerry Falwell blamed the September 11 attacks on “the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America.”