David Silvester investigated for gay marriage flood blame
A former UKIP councillor who blamed the winter storms and flooding on the legalisation of gay marriage is to be formally investigated.
Town councillor David Silvester, from Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire, said he had warned the PM the legislation would result in "disaster".
South Oxfordshire District Council will investigate whether he breached its code of conduct.
He was expelled from UKIP in February after making his comments in a letter.
A council spokesman said: "We would expect the investigation to take a minimum of one month and to start in a couple of weeks.
"The investigator will judge the case against precedents to consider whether the code of conduct applies in this case.
"If the code of conduct is deemed to have applied, the investigation will judge whether the councillor breached [it]."
The strongest sanction the council can take is to issue a reprimand.
'Pestilence and war'
An online petition demanding Mr Silvester's resignation attracted more than 25,000 signatures.
His house was targeted by protesters, who threw eggs at the property and attached a rainbow banner to the wall.
In the letter to the Henley Standard newspaper he wrote: "The scriptures make it abundantly clear that a Christian nation that abandons its faith and acts contrary to the Gospel (and in naked breach of a coronation oath) will be beset by natural disasters such as storms, disease, pestilence and war."
He added: "I wrote to David Cameron in April 2012 to warn him that disasters would accompany the passage of his same-sex marriage bill.
"But he went ahead despite a 600,000-signature petition by concerned Christians and more than half of his own parliamentary party saying that he should not do so.
"It is his fault that large swathes of the nation have been afflicted by storms and floods."
He went on to say no man, however powerful, "can mess with Almighty God with impunity and get away with it".