When Pat Robertson made the recent statement about the Haitian earthquake being a curse from his god, quite a few people stepped up to condemn him. The secular community led, as is so often the case, but I was happy to see many from Robertson's own religious tradition joining the chorus of condemnation. Yes, many Christians did the right thing here by speaking out against Robertson. Unfortunately, this has not stopped others from coming out and praising Robertson or essentially saying the same thing that made him fodder for so many comedians.The Christian Newswire brings us the story of the Rabbinical Alliance of America and a statement they released in which they make essentially the same claim Robertson did. In their version, it wasn't Haiti's pact with Pat Robertson's devil that prompted supernatural wrath but homosexuality.
It seems to me that Jewish extremists must have been feeling increasingly jealous of all their attention their Muslim and Christian cousins were receiving and decided it was time to flaunt their own brand of crazy.
After describing efforts to end DADT as "the equivalent of the spiritual rape of our military," the statement issued by the Alliance went on to say:
Thirteen months before 9/11, on the day New York City passed homosexual domestic partnership regulations, I joined a group of Rabbis at a City Hall prayer service, pleading with G-d not to visit disaster on the city of N.Y. We have seen the underground earthquake, tsunami, Katrina, and now Haiti. All this is in sync with a two thousand year old teaching in the Talmud that the practice of homosexuality is a spiritual cause of earthquakes. Once a disaster is unleashed, innocents are also victims just like in Chernobyl.Congratulations to Rabbi Yehuda Levin, spokesman for the Rabbinical Alliance of America and author of this statement, this week's idiot.
