A number of Christian leaders have blamed LGBTpeople for causing Hurricane Harvey.

Despite overwhelming evidence that supports climate as a factor in the devastating storm and subsequent flooding, a handful of evangelical leaders have suggested that the LGBT community are to blame.

Minister Kevin Swanson, said Houston had sinned by having a “very, very aggressively pro-homosexual mayor.”

“Jesus sends the message home, unless Americans repent, unless Houston repents, unless New Orleans repents, they will all likewise perish,” he told his radio show. “That is the message that the Lord Jesus Christ is sending home right now to America.”

His comments come just days after Christian radio personality Rick Wiles linked Houston’s progressive attitudes with the storm.

“Here’s a city that has boasted of its LGBT devotion, its affinity for the sexual perversion movement in America. They’re underwater,” he said.

Ann Coulter, a media pundit and climate change sceptic, also weighed in to the debate.

“I don’t believe Hurricane Harvey is God’s punishment for Houston electing a lesbian mayor. But that is more credible than ‘climate change’,” she wrote on Twitter.

Annise Parker, a former mayor of Houston who was one of the first across the US to hold a position of power and be openly gayreplied to Coulter’s tweet by tweeting:

“Darn it, I thought no one knew I had a super power over weather,” she wrote.