The devastating floods in Louisiana have impacted 40,000 homes damaged to some degree, leaving many without homes and all of their belongings lost. One of the homes that was destroyed in the unprecedented flooding belongs to an ultra-conservative Christian lobbyist, Tony Perkins, who the Independent reported has preached that disasters are sent to punish gay people.
Perkins is the president of the very right-wing Family Research Council, a Christian group, and has been categorized as an extremist anti-LGBT hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). The SPLC notes that Perkins has associated and addressed white supremacist groups—including purchasing KKK member David Duke's mailing list for a government campaign he was working on in the 1990's and speaking to the white supremacist group the Council of Conservative Citizens).
But Perkins' biggest target has long been the LGBT community, which he has repeatedly disparaged, even comparing gay rights activists to Nazis in 2014 when he said that activists were "going to start rolling out the boxcars to start hauling off Christians."
The man who had once said natural disasters are occurrences sent from above to punish gay people now finds himself among a varied and diverse group of Louisiana residents who, for reasons related only to the weather and the specific geography of the state, are without homes.
On the Family Research Council radio show he normally hosts, Perkins described the flood as being of "near biblical proportions" and said he and his family escaped their home in a canoe.
Perkins added during the radio segment that he was "looking for what God is going to do in this, adding that "sometimes we get too occupied with the other things in life and we're brought back to the very essentials of what life is and what gives life its purpose."
