There was an earthquake near Washington DC last week, and a hurricane tore through New York City this morning, for the first time in many years. Naturally, some took this as a sign of God’s wrath. The same sort of thing was said about Hurricane Katrina. Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry regularly treats changes in weather as indicia of Jesus’s favor.

For what it’s worth, the numbers suggest that if Jesus is in fact using hurricanes to guide our behavior, he’s trying to guide us to approve gay marriage

and to vote for democrats.

[boring details: Irene deaths from http://www.ksro.com/news/article.aspx?id=3182755, population data from http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/index.html, % voting from McCain from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election_in_Connecticut,_2008 and equivalent pages for the other states with Irene deaths, and gay marriage stats from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Same-sex_marriage_law_in_the_United_States_by_state using a dummy variable of 1 if gay marriage is allowed, 0 if it isn’t, and 0.5 if some kind of intermediate right is granted.]