On his radio program last Friday, right-wing pastor E.W. Jackson voiced his dismay over reports that a record number of LGBTQ candidates are seeking office in Virginia this year, saying that developments like this are spiritually polluting the atmosphere and causing storms like Hurricanes Harvey and Irma.
Jackson, who attempted his own failed bid for elected office in Virginia in 2013 in order to promote his Religious Right political agenda, said he is deeply "troubled by the fact that they are bragging" that lots of LGBTQ candidates are on the ballot, because "it suggests that there is an agenda here and that the agenda is not to serve the interests of the people of Virginia, the agenda is to further the LGBTQ agenda."
"When you say you have an agenda in an office for which you ought enter it without any agenda other than to fulfill the requirements of the law," Jackson said, "I don't believe you're qualified to serve in that office."
Jackson then blasted judges who struck down state anti-gay marriage bans, saying that they did so in order to promote an agenda "that flies in the face of the will of God" and the Constitution because there is no right for any two people to get married to whomever they want.
"Adults can't marry children," he said. "People can't marry animals."
Jackson said that "iniquity" such as this "is one of the signs of the continuing deterioration of the world in preparation coming of Jesus Christ."
Insisting that he was not specifically saying that "the LGBTQ community is causing the storms" and that there is not a "one-to-one ratio" between LGBTQ candidates running for office and the recent hurricanes, Jackson nonetheless asserted that "if you want to look for a cause of storms ... the atmosphere and the endorsement of and the embrace of what the word of God calls sin is a greater poison to the environment than any physical thing we put into the air with industry and cars and fossil fuels."
"We ought to be more concerned about the moral temperature of our country than we are about the physical temperature," he said.
