If you're wondering what gay people have to do with the Mauritian weather, let me give you a brief summary of events.
This past week, a Mauritian gay rights organization launched a campaign to promote LGBT rights and ask for the legalisation of sodomy (Currently illegal in Mauritius, even for consenting adults). The next day, there were heavy rains in Mauritius, which, it being a tropical island, happens often. And yet, a significant number of Mauritians began to claim that the torrential rains were god's way of indicating how displeased he was with both the group's demands and the Mauritian population for letting them demand it at all.
Now, generally, I would just chalk it up to general stupidity, even the US has a few nutjobs who bring up this sort of thing from time to time. But these aren't isolated nutjobs and there are far too many of them. This isn't the first time this happened either. On the 30th March 2013, severe rains caused the death of 11 people. Soon after that, some people claimed that this was god's way of punishing the country, because that week, gay tourists had held a wedding reception there. And a lot of Mauritians thought that was a perfectly rational explanation.
I expected that notion to die quickly, but not only do I see more and more people on Facebook saying that, they now blame gay people each time something bad happens. And each time, there's an article on gay rights, they bring up the 2013 flood as proof that LGBT rights are a bad thing and will doom the country.
If you're one of those Mauritians, allow me to explain why that's a batshit crazy idea to have.
I could attempt to use logic and explain that February and March are the wettest months and that it's climate change and lack of proper drainage facilities that cause floods but I don't think that rationality is going to convince you that god won't send heavy rain and kill people if you make anal sex legal. But if you truly believe that eliminating this law will cause so much damage, then surely it follows that you also believe that legalizing gay marriage would be catastrophic.
By your logic, countries with legal gay marriage should be suffering the most. If god sent floods to Mauritius just because a small group of people called for the decriminalization of sodomy and killed 11 people because of a gay wedding reception, surely he must be doing far worse things to countries where gay couples get married everyday. And he must be most pleased with the countries that punish homosexuality the most harshly.
Here are the 18 countries which have legal gay marriage (Not inclusive of those with civil unions or countries like the US which partially allow it): Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Canada, South Africa, Norway, Sweden, Portugal, Iceland, Argentina, Denmark, France, Brazil, Uruguay, New Zealand, Britain, Luxembourg and Finland.
Here are the 10 countries where you can be killed for being gay: Yemen, Iraq, Iran, Mauritania, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan and the U.A.E.
I could just ask you to look at the countries and figure out which ones are worse off, but I'm going to give you some more facts. This is a 2013 report on world happiness. These are the top 5 countries for the happiest citizens: Denmark, Norway, Switzerland, Netherlands and Sweden. 4 of them have legal gay marriage and Switzerland allows registered partnerships.
The Netherlands have had gay marriage since 2001 and legalized same-sex relations in 1811. They were the first country to legalize gay marriage 14 years ago and in 2013, they were the fourth happiest country in the world. If god is punishing them, he's doing a pretty bad job of it.
This is a 2014 report of the world's worst human right abusers. I don't think that it would surprise you to learn that Somalia, Sudan, Iraq, Yemen are in the list of countries that have the worst reputations for human rights. Mauritania is equally shitty and Saudi Arabia regularly violates human rights.
Does it still seem to you that your god is in the business of punishing countries who give gay people rights?
Do you still think that god caused floods the day after the campaign was launched?
If he was trying to express his displeasure, it seems that he missed his target by a day. Why couldn't he be more explicit and send it the same day?
And if you think that your god is the one who sent the rains that in 2013, caused the death of 11 people, you should probably reconsider worshiping him. After all, he did kill 11 innocent people who had nothing to do with the wedding reception that upset him. That doesn't say much for his character.
