Pink News has corrected its reporting on this story:
An earlier version of this article referenced two inaccurate reports regarding Yaakov Litzman blaming the coronavirus pandemic on homosexuality. This has since been corrected.
Apparently, it was an Israeli rabbi named Meir Mazuz who had made the comments about COVID-19 being a divine punishment. So while the irony of an anti-LGBTQ government official who claimed God is smiting us for tolerating homosexuality actually getting COVID-19 no longer applies, he’s still a horrible homophobe — and the irony of a health minister being reckless in the face of an epidemic is pretty rich in itself.
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Israel’s health minister, Yaakov Litzman, who last month declared that the novel coronavirus is a “divine punishment against homosexuality,” has the coronavirus.
Not the most inspiring coming-out story I’ve ever heard, but hey … whatever works.
Pink News:
As well as being Israel’s health minister, he also leads the ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism party and witnesses said he was seen praying at the home of another member of his sect three days after indoor services were banned.
His own department’s guidelines became stricter, barring prayer services altogether, but Litzman was later seen attending a service at a synagogue near his home.
He and his wife Chava have now contracted COVID-19, and as a result of recent contact with him, Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and several other top government officials have been forced to self-isolate for 15 days.
Litzman has a long history of anti-LGBTQ activism, because of course he does:
In 2016, Yaakov Litzman voted against allowing same-sex civil unions, same-sex couples adopting, educating health professionals about gender identity and sexual orientation, prohibiting conversion therapy and giving same-sex partners of killed soldiers the same the benefits as opposite-sex couples. On the same day he said that LGBT+ people were “sinners”.
Looks like the coronavirus doesn’t discriminate after all, even if some of God’s disciples seem determined to do so.
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