The idea that Hurricane Katrina was part of God's judgment against homosexuals is now being proclaimed by a lawmaker in Northern Ireland.

Maurice Mills of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) believes the catastrophic storm was sent to impact "Southern Decadence," a festival celebrating debauchery and the homosexual lifestyle which had attracted some 125,000 people last year.

Katrina struck New Orleans just days before this year's event, but Mills says most of the media failed to report that fact.

"Surely this is a warning to nations where such wickedness is increasingly promoted and practiced," Mills said, according to the Belfast Telegraph. "This abominable and filthy practice of sodomy has resulted in the great continent of Africa being riddled with AIDS, all at great cost to the nations and innocent children." [WorldNetDaily]

[via Dispatches from the Culture Wars]

Addenda: PZ Myers lays out a nice dichotomy. One side includes

people who are committed to reason, empiricism, and natural evidence—those who believe in the complete (or near complete) significance of the real world, the universe, all matter, energy, and laws of science to our lives. We agree that we lack a comprehensive understanding of the universe, but experience (that important empirical component) leads us to expect that studying our world ever more accurately is going to lead us to greater understanding.

He calls this side of the dichotomy the "Naturals," and they contrast with the "Unnaturals," who

are those who think inspiration and intuition and all the internal imagery of their minds define their external reality; that what they wish to be so will be so if only they can articulate it and select and distort evidence for the purposes of persuasion. What they see is only applicable and interesting if it reinforces their presuppositions, and all else is a lure and a distraction, an illusion that must be disregarded or rationalized to fit into a predetermined explanation.