Religions around the world have interpreted natural phenomena as God’s will for as long as we’ve had gods and religions. But in God’s arsenal of punishments, perhaps none are as storied as the flood.

In modern times, conservative evangelicals have claimed floods, such as the one that followed Hurricane Katrina in 2005, are God’s punishment for moral decay. By moral decay, they typically mean abortion or homosexuality.

One prominent evangelical who’s a fan of this line of thinking is Tony Perkins, the head of the rabidly anti-gay Family Research Council.

In a 2015 interview with Messianic Jewish pastor Jonathan Cahn, Perkins agreed that Hurricane Joaquin, a devastating storm that hit the Bahamas last year, was “a sign of God’s wrath”, punishment for abortion and for the legalization of same-sex marriage.

Perkins also frequently compares homosexuality to pedophilia. “It is a homosexual problem,” he said. He also believes “the homosexual community” is engaged in behavior “that will destroy our nation”.

As a member of that “homosexual community” who has endured this rhetoric for his entire adult life, I must admit I found it difficult to not raise an eyebrow at the mental image of Tony Perkins paddling in a canoe after his house was swept away in the flood that’s currently affecting Louisiana.

“This is a flood of near-biblical proportions,” Perkins said on his radio show. “We had to escape from our home Saturday by canoe. We had about 10 feet of water at the end of our driveway. Our house flooded, a few of our cars flooded.” Thankfully, none of his family was harmed.

You could be forgiven for thinking of this as some kind of twisted justice, or at least as a delicious bit of divine irony.

I’ve been out of the closet long enough that Perkins’ words don’t affect me anymore, but I remember what it was like to read them when I first came out in rural Oklahoma, before same-sex marriage was legalized and before I had other gay people supporting me. It was incredibly painful. It was a reminder of the thing that had kept me in hiding for so long: we are so misunderstood. We are so hated.

But to react with glee to news of Perkins’ plight – to regard it as comeuppance or karma – would, though tempting, be to engage in the toxic one-dimensional thinking that I loathe in the religious right.

This is a flood that has already killed 13 people. This is a flood that, like most natural disasters, disproportionately affect poor people and communities of color. I think of the legacy of Katrina, and how so many communities still haven’t recovered.

Natural disasters are a time to come together, a time to put on display the empathy that, I believe, is what makes humanity special. To take a natural disaster as an opportunity to condemn people who are already vulnerable is inhuman in my mind. When I think of how the religious right has done this in the wake of so many tragedies, it makes me angry all over again. They are not examples to be followed.

I wish Tony Perkins hadn’t spent so much of his life squarely positioning himself against my thriving and that of my community. I wish Tony Perkins didn’t think of hurricanes and floods as God’s wrath. But I don’t wish harm on him. He’s a person.

My hope is that the flood makes Perkins reflect on his past statements. I hope that he contemplates whether or not his actions have truly been Christian.

Tony Perkins and I disagree over whether God sends storms to punish people. I don’t believe that. But if in these events he sees a sign from above to humble himself, I hope he heeds it.