Of all of the things that have outraged me the most about Katrina, one thing that really and truly pisses me off is the notion that what I do in the bedroom with a consenting adult is what killed so many in New Orleans when in fact it was the political arm of the fundamentalists that have stripped away the social protections that should have ensured our infrastructure. This is a natural response from overly developed monkeys trying to hide their Godlessness and how that Godlessness has affected this country. It is also a human reaction, as our brains at the most basic level are simply pattern recognition systems.
Natural and biological, it may be, this assault on poor and homosexual Americans is illogical and traceable to Republican ideology. Unfortunately, their ruminations as to how women flashing their titties, voudouns practicing their religion and homosexuals engaging in consentual sex do not flow from any God I've ever communed with.
In fact, these ruminations sound like an amoral force (in the sense that any Creator would be beyond the concept of human morality) that can operate without impunity. If that is not a Republican wet dream- then I don't know what is.
The first issue I would like to address is the notion of Southern Decadence and the timing of Katrina. Apparently, half-clad leather daddies and proud lesbian couples are so offensive that God needed to kill 10,000 poor black people a week early just to stop all of the sinning. That's right- a week early. All of us butt pirates have had ample time to reschedule our off time and even get refunds on our airfare and hotel accommodations. In fact- all that Katrina did (in terms of Southern Decadence) was pose an incredible inconvenience and lost hedonism.
Neither of those outcomes for the gay community compares with the unmitigated disaster that was unleashed on the Gulf Coast.
Furthermore, this focus on New Orleans and how -its- debauchery brought along the storm further edifies the 9/11 model: multiple tragedies with one central focus that precludes the peripheral tragedies. In short: the Mississippi Gulf Coast and the Alabama Gulf Coast are the Pennsylvania and Pentagon to the World Trade Center of New Orleans. These drooling fundamentalists are more than happy to minimize the grief in Mississippi and Alabama in order to impose their fantasy on New Orleans. We saw the same thing happen: the Pentagon was not the focus of patriotism after 9/11 and during the run-up to Iraq War II; the more easily understood notion of money and money's servants stood in the center of that narrative.
This fantasy, however, requires a dehumanization of the victims of this catastrophe that should never exist in the same sentence of one claiming Christianity. I think that Christ would find it repulsive that his disciples would reduce a vast swath of humanity to something along the lines of cosmic collateral damage. In this fundamentalist Christian narrative the people who died screaming in their attics and the husbands who held on for as long as they could before their wives were swept away are simply bit players. Instead of focusing on relieving the suffering of the people who were -actually- affected, this blowhards of Biblical proportions would rather focus on the phantom victim of the "gay" and "occult" communities.
Horse shit.
I am going to go on generalities here and guess that a majority of the poor black people in Louisiana is much like the majority of poor black people in Alabama, where I grew up. That is the most solidly Christian block of people (next to society white women and their need for a social outlet in a small town) that you will ever find. If there were a cosmic force behind this storm, then why did he kill a demographic that is statistically more likely to follow him? And if God is such an awesome God (who reigns from heaven above) then why did he not move the storm a week and blast the heathen city when it was sure to have increased its already considerable per capita allotment of sodomy?
The answer to those questions are simple. To the rabid Christian mind, the idea of tragedy is anathema. Once you have told yourself long enough that God speaks to you, then you are going to give God's voice to your personal fantasies. You are going to assure yourself that God only punishes the wicked. We saw it with the tsunami where more than one moron asked about God's hand in the wave. Now we see it on our own shores. Instead of simply saying that God is unknowable and works in ways we cannot comprehend, the fundamentalists want to make sense of the matter. They want meaning and if there is none to find, then they will be more than happy to project one.
Consequently, when the fantasy is projected it is no surprise that the fantasy is structurally identical to a Republican wet dream. They are the part of "responsibility" and forthrightness. There were many a Republican who said that the parents were back in control once Republicans took back the White House. They have built their party on challenging "elitism" while ignoring its growth within themselves. They are righteousnessists: people who stake their character on their own righteousness. When natural calamity (the playground, apparently, of a capricious God) strikes, then they must find a pattern within the darkness.
They must turn this event into not only a vessel of their fantasy (un-judgeable bigotry executed through means that leave nothing but finality) but also a means of further strengthening that fantasy.
However, it is the Republican structure that has bled this country dry for 25 years. Only two of those past 25 years have seen Democratic control of Congress and the White House. In usual Democratic dithering, they wrecked everything that they could get their fingers into. But for the other 23 we've seen Republican leadership or Republican control of the purse strings. We have seen conservatism ascendant and this is the result.
Unless God is also a Republican, then I do not see anywhere of placing this blood on his hands. Even the wet dreams of a religious radical cannot erase 25 years of ruling conservative ideology. There are lessons that God can teach us regarding this; even in the Bible there is a story of mustard seeds that I find particularly applicable.