An Israeli MP has blamed a spate of recent earthquakes in the Middle East on gays. Israeli MP blames earthquakes on gays The annual Tel Aviv gay and lesbian pride march: blamed for causing earthquakes

Six earthquakes have struck Israel and neighbouring Lebanon and Jordan in recent months, with two coming last week alone. Shlomo Benizri, of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish Shas party, suggested that the tremors could be stopped through the simple expedient of repealing various liberalising laws on homosexuality that have been passed by the Israeli parliament, or Knesset, in recent years.

Since decriminalising homosexuality in 1988, Israel has passed several laws on the subject , including decisions to recognise same-sex marriages carried out abroad, and granting inheritance rights and other benefits held by married couples to gay partnerships. Last Sunday, to the outrage of the religious Right, the country's attorney general, Meni Mazuz, ruled that same-sex couples should be allowed to adopt children.

In what Mr Benizri clearly believes is no coincidence, the first of last week's quakes hit the country just two days later.

"Why do earthquakes happen? One of the reasons is the things to which the Knesset gives legitimacy, to sodomy," Benizri said during a parliamentary debate on earthquake preparedness.

Stopping "passing legislation on how to encourage homosexual activity in the state of Israel, which anyway brings about earthquakes," would represent a cost-effective method of preventing future earthquakes, he continued.

"We are looking for earthly solutions, how to prevent them," he said. "I have another way to prevent earthquakes. The Gemara says that one of the reasons earthquakes happen - which the Knesset (parliament) legitimises - is homosexuality.

"God says you shake your genitals where you are not supposed to and I will shake my world in order to wake you up," he added. How About That?

The Shas party has caused outrage in Israeli society before. In 1985, a collision between a train and a bus that killed 22 people, most of them children, was blamed by Shas on slipping standards of Jewish observance in the country.

Mr Benizri also has previous experience in this area. In 1999 he caused controversy by saying homosexuals are mentally ill.

Quoted in the Israeli newspaper Maariv, he said he was "ready to fund the creation of special closed sections for them in psychiatric hospitals."