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Rabbi Blames Earthquake on Gays

Warns against repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell

by
Marc Tracy
February 02, 2010
Defense Secretary Gates testifying today.(Mark Wilson/Getty Images)
Defense Secretary Gates testifying today.(Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

We have our very own Pat Robertson! (Lucky us.) Ultra-Orthodox Rabbi Yehuda Levin expounded on his view that homosexuality was a “spiritual cause” of the earthquake in Haiti, as well as, we think, of 9/11. Said Levin, who is head of the Rabbinical Alliance of America:

Thirteen months before 9/11, on the day New York City passed homosexual domestic partnership regulations, I joined a group of rabbis at a City Hall prayer service, pleading with God not to visit disaster on the city of N.Y. [Ed.: Next time, pray harder!] We have seen the underground earthquake, tsunami, Katrina, and now Haiti. All this is in sync with a two thousand year old teaching in the Talmud that the practice of homosexuality is a spiritual cause of earthquakes.

Why is the rabbi saying this now? Because today, Defense Secretary Robert Gates is testifying before a U.S. Senate committee that he agrees with President Barack Obama that gays should be allowed to serve openly in the military. “We plead with saner heads in Congress and the Pentagon to stop sodomization of our military and our society,” Rabbi Levin asks.“ Enough is enough.” Who knows what catastrophes might befall the United States if it is finally allowed to fully tap the country’s talent pool, including its gay citizens? One shudders to think.

Marc Tracy is a staff writer at The New Republic, and was previously a staff writer at Tablet. He tweets @marcatracy.