Does God Hate All Republicans, Or Just The Bigoted Variety?

God spares Folsom Street, incinerates GOP stronghold in Orange County-- Mormons beware

My friend Cynthia was so relieved today. Both her sister and her nephew have homes in the Santa Barbara area where fires destroyed scores of houses. In fact, Friday she told me they believed her nephew's 100 year old house was lost to the inferno, since his whole hillside in Montecido was covered in flames. But over the weekend Cynthia found out that not only was her sister's home fine but that her nephew's house was untouched, although the homes behind him and on both sides of his had burned to the ground. If I was completely psychotic and in dire need of immediate mental health intervention, I might say, "God spared them because they were Obama voters and because they voted NO on 8."

But that kind of crap would never cross my mind. So how did it? A blogger friend, Mike Tidmus, pointed out that crazed Republican psychopaths, as if on cue, are already raging that the fires were God's punishment to Californians for almost allowing gay marriage. The Mormon's hate proposition, eliminating gays from marriage bonds, did pass, but apparently, for the crazies and their version of Gawd, not by enough.

It was only a matter of time before some psychotic theo-fascist tried to pin the California wildfires on gay people and marriage equality supporters, a group that, for the record, includes a large number of people of genuine faith. Leave it to the self-anointed Ayatollah of Hillcrest, James Hartline, to not disappoint.

The ex-gay Mr Hartline has stepped up to say that gay people and their supporters are “shouting so loud for the acceptance of homosexuality, that they cannot hear the thunderous warnings of God.” The homo-sex-obsessed Mr Hartline further observes that this isn’t the first time that his God has whacked the Golden State for its tolerance: “Each time homosexual activists attempt to force their agenda on California, there have been raging, massive, incinerating fires sweeping across the California landscape.”

Hart's vicious, blasphemous hate-filled rantings turn Jesus' message of love and brotherhood into the Bronze-Age war cry of savages still coping with life outside of caves.

And then the wildfires of Southern California engulfed the land like a raging judgment against the radicalized anti-christian California rebels.

Is that really what happened? Or did some nut in Sylmar-- which has the highest foreclosure rate in America-- decide arson was an acceptable Republican alternative to bankruptcy? And, instead of fires raging in West Hollywood or the Castro or Polk Gulch, they're in places like Yorba Linda, one of the most right-wing parts of California, represented by the single most extreme right kook in the California congressional delegation, corrupt wingnut Gary Miller. Maybe God was trying to tell the Yorba Lindans to stop sending extremists to Congress and to be more tolerant of His gay sons and daughters.

Miller's screwed up 42nd CD is the Inland Empire at it's worst-- a hellhole where L.A., San Bernardino and Orange Counties sort of merge into one of the last and worst GOP bastions in Southern California. Was God's targeting off? The district has a PVI of R+10! Yorba Linda itself has a Republican voter registration edge of 59.6% Republican and 38.9% Democrat. The medium home value (pre-God's wrath) was $764,964. I suspect that among the rational this line of thinking will do about as well as Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell blaming 911 on liberals, gays, the ACLU and People For the American Way. No sale.