This article was the subject of a legal dispute between The Civilian and Conservative Party Leader Colin Craig, which came about as the result of a legal notice that you can read in full here.

In this article, The Civilian published a statement which it attributed to Colin Craig regarding Maurice Williamson, “big gay rainbows” and the passing of the gay marriage legislation. We accept, upon further review, that Mr. Craig never made the statement attributed to him. We retract the statement and apologise to Mr. Craig for any harm we have caused to his impeccable reputation.

We would like to note that we have also taken the additional measure of bolding the statement in question so that everybody knows which thing it was that Mr. Craig did not say.

Pakuranga MP Maurice Williamson is acknowledging that he looks pretty stupid this morning after a series of floods in the Nelson, Waikato and Bay of Plenty regions appeared to contradict his assertion that nothing bad would come of the passing of gay marriage legislation.

Last week, responding to constituents in his electorate who believed that the introduction of the same sex marriage bill had caused the North Island’s drought, Mr. Williamson argued that an onset of heavy rain across the country was a sign that the Judeo-Christian god of New Zealand’s farmers did, in fact, approve of the legislation.

But now that the rain has caused widespread flooding in and around Hamilton and Nelson – while more bad weather looks set to make it worse – Williamson has been forced to concede that he was wrong.

“It was a bit of a silly thing to say, in retrospect,” said Williamson before getting into a car. “Of course rain is a bad thing.”

Conservative Party Leader Colin Craig was among the first to point out the National MP’s mistake.

“Williamson likes to talk about big gay rainbows,” said Craig, “but it would help if he understood what the rainbow actually means. After Noah’s flood, God painted a giant rainbow across the sky, which was a message that he would never again flood the world, unless we made him very angry. And we have.”

Prime Minister John Key has reportedly reprimanded Mr. Williamson for being “a big idiot” and is considering removing some of his ministerial portfolios. Mr. Williamson has said that he would accept that, but was surprised to learn he had portfolios.

Meanwhile, Williamson has also had his invitation to appear on the famous Ellen DeGeneres Show revoked after its producers learnt of the flooding.