Andrew Cuomo Actually Acknowledges Idiot Rabbi’s Gay Marriage/Hurricane Rant

Every time a natural disaster destroys entire communities, a handful of religious idiots blame it on gay people and the politicians who defend their civil rights. Hurricane Sandy is no exception.

In most cases, however, the moronic ramblings of fringe lunatics are routinely ignored by elected officials. That, however, is not the case with Hurricane Sandy.

In the aftermath of the storm, wing-nut Southern Christians claimed the hurricane was God’s way of punishing the New York State Legislature for voting in favor of gay marriage. But Southern Christians aren’t the only idiots who think unfortunate weather is divine punishment for defying God’s word (as it’s explained in thousands-of-years-old works of fiction).

Enter Rabbi Noson Leiter, the leader of the group Torah Jews for Decency, who is the latest homophobe to blame a storm on gays who occupy lower Manhattan — which he describes as “one of the national centers for homosexuality.”

“The Lord will not bring another flood to destroy the entire world, but
he can punish particular areas with that flood, and if we look at the
same-gender-marriage recognition movement that’s occurring, that’s
certainly a message for us to learn,” Leiter said during an October 30, radio interview.

For
some reason, New York pols — including Governor Andrew Cuomo — are
actually acknowledging Leiter’s rant as a rational thought worthy of a
response.

“The comments made by Rabbi Noson Leiter that
sought to link the devastation caused by Hurricane Sandy to our state’s
embrace of marriage equality are as offensive as they are ignorant,”
Cuomo says in a press release issued this afternoon. “This catastrophic
storm claimed the lives of more than forty New Yorkers. This kind of
hateful rhetoric has no place in our public discourse, and is
particularly distasteful in times of tragedy. Our state is proud to
offer equal rights to all our citizens, and we will never tolerate the
use of a tragedy like Hurricane Sandy to promote a divisive and bigoted
agenda. I call on Rabbi Leiter to apologize immediately for his hurtful
comments.”

As we mentioned, Leiter isn’t the first idiot to link
the hurricane to gay marriage. Yet, he’s the only one Cuomo has publicly
acknowledged.

Pastor Luke Robinson of Quinn Chapel AME Church
in Frederick, Maryland, recently blamed the storm on Mayor Mike
Bloomberg’s dumping of $250,000 into Maryland’s gay marriage campaign.

“So here was the mayor of New York giving a quarter of a million
dollars, coming down to Maryland discussing [gay marriage],” Robinson said last week.
“While he’s here somebody whispers in the ear, you better go back home
and protect your stock because God is sending judgment. The thing came
through the area. You have to understand the season and the time. It’s
almost the end of hurricane season, but God sent one of the biggest
hurricanes ever.”

Not a peep out of the governor on that one.

The
only notable difference in the two comments is the fact that Leiter’s
were made on behalf of Neil DiCarlo, an upstate idiot running for the
state Senate on the Conservative Party ticket. DiCarlo opposes gay
marriage.

Regardless, there’s a proper way for politicians to
handle the ranting and raving of bigoted idiots: ignore them — we
didn’t even know this jerk opened his stupid mouth until Cuomo sent out a
press release about it. And now you know this jerk opened his stupid
mouth, too.

We sent Cuomo’s office an email asking why he chose to respond to this clown’s ramblings. We’re yet to hear back.