Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Weekend Contributor
Scott Lively, the head of Abiding Truth Ministries, is a resident of Springfield, Massachusetts. Lively is a controversial evangelical pastor known for having a homophobic agenda. He “specializes in stirring up anti-gay feeling around the globe.” When he was a young man, Lively said he had a “live and let live” attitude toward gays. Once a liberal, he admits that he was an alcoholic and a drug addict until he “got saved” in 1986. He says that since then his “focus has been to restore a biblical focus with regards to marriage and sexuality.”
Jack Rodolico (Latitude News) says that after coming to Christ, Lively began to view social issues “from God’s perspective”—and his “faith began to fuel the fire of his activism.” According to a report in the National Journal, “Lively became a lawyer, author, and advocate in pursuit of the cause.” In 1992, Lively got involved in Oregon’s Ballot Measure 9. That measure “would have amended the Oregon Constitution to summarily recognize ‘homosexuality, pedophilia, sadism and masochism as abnormal, wrong, unnatural and perverse.’” Rodico reported that Oregon voters denied Lively and his anti-gay colleagues a victory—but only after “an ugly political battle ensued.” Rodico said that the defeat left a lasting impression on Lively.
BALLOT MEASURE 9
About a decade ago, Lively gave up on the United States “when one of his cases (challenging an antidiscrimination law) failed.” Lively said, “I began shifting my emphasis, which is going to the other countries in the world that are still culturally conservative to warn them about how the Left has advanced its agenda in the U.S., Canada, and Europe—and to help put barriers in place. And the goal is to build a consensus of moral countries to actually roll back the leftist agenda in my country.”
According to Mariah Blake (Mother Jones), Lively first visited the country of Uganda in 2002. Blake said that Lively “has cultivated ties to influential politicians and religious leaders at the forefront of the nation’s anti-gay crusade.”
Blake:
Just before the first draft of Uganda’s anti-gay bill began circulating in April 2009, Lively traveled to Kampala and gave lengthy presentations to members of Uganda’s parliament and cabinet, which laid out the argument that the nation’s president and lawmakers would later use to justify Uganda’s draconian anti-gay crackdown—namely that Western agitators were trying to unravel Uganda’s social fabric by spreading “the disease” of homosexuality to children. “They’re looking for other people to be able to prey upon,” Lively said, according to video footage. “When they see a child that’s from a broken home it’s like they have a flashing neon sign over their head.”
Alex Seitz-Wald (National Journal) said that Lively and a small band of “incredibly influential” American activists “spend their time crisscrossing the globe to meet with foreign lawmakers, deliver speeches, make allies, cut checks, and otherwise foment a backlash against the so-called international gay-rights agenda…” Seitz-Wald says that—in a large part of the world—they’re winning. Seitz-Wald wrote that in the month of December 2013 alone India’s Supreme Court “re-criminalized homosexuality, Nigeria outlawed LGBT advocacy (gay sex was already punishable by up to 14 years in prison), and Uganda passed a watered-down version of its infamous ‘kill the gays’ bill, which allows for life prison terms—if not the death penalty—for ‘aggravated homosexuality.’”
Mariah Blake wrote that when Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni signed the new harsh anti-gay bill into law in late February, he said that the measure had been “provoked by arrogant and careless western groups that are fond of coming into our schools and recruiting young children into homosexuality.” She said that what Museveni “failed to mention” was that the legislation itself was “largely due to Western interlopers, chief among them a radical American pastor named Scott Lively.”
Blake—like Seitz-Wald—reports that Scott Lively isn’t the only US evangelical “who has fanned the flames of anti-gay sentiment in Uganda.” She says that as the anti-gay groups continue to lose ground at home, religious conservatives are increasingly turning “their attention to Africa. And Uganda, with its large Christian population, has been particularly fertile ground for their crusade.”
In The Uganda Anti-Gay Bill’s U.S. Roots, Michelle Goldberg writes about Uganda being an African country “where American-style evangelical Christianity is exploding.” Jeff Sharlet, author of The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, has reported that the sponsor of the country’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill is David Bahati—the secretary of the Uganda branch of The Family…and that the bill’s champion C. Martin Ssempa “was a protégé of Rick Warren.” Goldberg added that Stephen Langa, a major anti-gay activist, is the head of Uganda’s Family Life Network, which happens to be “an affiliate of the Phoenix-based group Disciple Nations Alliance.” Note: The Family, a secretive American evangelical organization, has a number of powerful and influential members—including “Sens. James Inhofe, Jim DeMint, and Tom Coburn.”
Goldberg says that American Christians never urged their counterparts in Uganda “to try to institute the death penalty for homosexuality.” Still, she notes that the “ideology underlying the bill comes from American conservatives.” She adds, “It is Americans who have elaborated a vision of homosexuality as a satanic global conspiracy bent on destroying society’s foundations, akin to the Jewish octopus in classic anti-Semitic narratives.” Goldberg also reports that according to Warren Throckmorton—“an evangelical psychology professor once associated with the ex-gay movement”—anti-gay activists in Uganda “cite materials by Scott Lively and Paul Cameron, two of the fiercest American opponents of the so-called homosexual agenda.”
Scott Lively on how homosexuals supposedly prey on children
SOURCES
Barney Frank: ‘Repudiated’ U.S. ‘hatemongers’ are promoting anti-gay laws in Uganda (Raw Story)
The painful case of Pastor Scott Lively, homophobe to the world (Washington Post)
Evangelicals Are Winning the Gay Marriage Fight–in Africa and Russia: Evangelical advocates, having failed here, are finding friendlier audiences all over the world. (National Journal)
The Crusader (Boston Magazine)
Uganda’s anti-gay bill refocuses attention on US evangelical influence: Uganda’s President Museveni signed into law Monday a bill that criminalizes homosexuality with life sentences and punishes efforts to raise or discuss gay issues. (Christian Science Monitor)
U.S. exporting homophobia to Uganda: And debate in Uganda divides evangelicals back in U.S. (Latitude News)
Scott Lively & Rick Warren: The PR Campaign to Whitewash the Right’s Anti-Gay Uganda History (Political Research Associates)
The Uganda Anti-Gay Bill’s U.S. Roots (The Daily Beast)
U.S. evangelicals on the defense over Uganda’s new Anti-Homosexuality Act (Religion News Service)
~ Submitted by Elaine Magliaro
The views expressed in this posting are the author’s alone and not those of the blog, the host, or other weekend bloggers. As an open forum, weekend bloggers post independently without pre-approval or review. Content and any displays or art are solely their decision and responsibility.
Prosecutors had previously dropped a charge of indecent exposure due to lack of evidence but adjusted the wording of a second charge of outraging public indecency to include “fellatio with a cow.”
http://www.breitbart.com/InstaBlog/2014/01/28/Beastiality-Jury-Erupts-in-Laughter-After-Hearing-Man-Rejected-by-Cow
Paul might want to check the scrip he is using….. I figure his mentors use should be sufficient….
Paul,
Your sources are definitely biased. In fact, one source you used was affiliated with the John Birch Society.
I guess you’d prefer to believe the anti-gay rhetoric and writings of an ex alcoholic and drug addict like Scott Lively rather than the word of historians regarding homosexuals and the Nazi party back in 1930s and 1940s Germany.
So it goes.
Elaine – One of my areas of interest is the growth of the Nazi Party. I do not accept what Lively has said about the Holocaust, I explained that way back upstream. Roehm probably was the only ‘high level’ Nazi who was a homosexual, but he was not the only one in the S.A. And it was the S.A. that brought Hitler to power. The S.S. started out as a small, personal body guard for Hitler. They would be responsible for the Holocaust after they grew.
Would you point out the source that is affiliated with the John Birch Society? I did not think they existed any more.
On a side-note, you should know that one is really never an ex alcoholic. You can be a sober alcoholic, but you are an alcoholic to your dying breath. Dylan Thomas was a functioning alcoholic whose poetry is incredible. His Under Milkwood is considered one of the finest pieces of writing in modern literature. Robert Downey, Jr is an ex drug addict. He is probably one of the finest actors we have today. Besides, we do not know what the drinking and drug habits of those historians you tout are. Destroying the messenger is usually AYs job. Stay above it. 🙂
http://theaxisofstevilshow.com/newsflash/352-bestiality.html
John and Mary Beth Wilson, of Butcher Hollow, West Virginia announced their separation and intent to divorce following a recent drunken escapade that led to Mary Beth awakening at 2am to the sounds of the cat screeching in the living room below. Apparently, John had come home from the bar and engaged the cat n a sexual encounter. Mary Beth came downstairs and the two began to argue.
At some point, the argument took a turn to the pronunciation of the word “bestiality”. Mary Beth, who pronounces the word correctly, she asserts, was mortified by John’s pronunciation beast-e-ality. “What kind of a backwards hillbilly cannot pronounce a word like that correctly” she asked a member of our staff.
While the couple was able to resolve all other differences, this one seems unconquerable and sadly will bring an end to the marriage. John says he has not spoken to Mary Beth since the morning after the fight. “‘You say bestiality, I say beastiality, let’s call the whole thing off ‘ was the last thing I said, or intend to say to her”.
annie – lol
Elaine – if the SPLC said the sky was blue I would go out and check first. They are an extremely biased source.
Paul,
No one is putting anything in your mouth but you….. I bet you have the best polished shoes in town…. Now is polish a verb or noun…..
http://hotair.com/archives/2014/03/31/the-fbis-break-up-with-the-splc-may-be-more-public-relations-than-anything-else/
Just to keep you up-to-date.
10 Anti-Gay Myths Debunked
By Evelyn Schlatter and Robert Steinback
http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2010/winter/10-myths
Excerpt:
MYTH # 5
Gay men controlled the Nazi Party and helped to orchestrate the Holocaust.
THE ARGUMENT
This claim comes directly from a 1995 book titled The Pink Swastika: Homosexuality in the Nazi Party, by Scott Lively and Kevin Abrams. Lively is the virulently anti-gay founder of Abiding Truth Ministries and Abrams is an organizer of a group called the International Committee for Holocaust Truth, which came together in 1994 and included Lively as a member.
The primary argument Lively and Abrams make is that gay people were not victimized by the Holocaust. Rather, Hitler deliberately sought gay men for his inner circle because their “unusual brutality” would help him run the party and mastermind the Holocaust. In fact, “the Nazi party was entirely controlled by militaristic male homosexuals throughout its short history,” the book claims. “While we cannot say that homosexuals caused the Holocaust, we must not ignore their central role in Nazism,” Lively and Abrams add. “To the myth of the ‘pink triangle’ — the notion that all homosexuals in Nazi Germany were persecuted — we must respond with the reality of the ‘pink swastika.'”
These claims have been picked up by a number of anti-gay groups and individuals, including Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association, as proof that gay men and lesbians are violent and sick. The book has also attracted an audience among anti-gay church leaders in Eastern Europe and among Russian-speaking anti-gay activists in America.
THE FACTS
The Pink Swastika has been roundly discredited by legitimate historians and other scholars. Christine Mueller, professor of history at Reed College, did a line-by-line refutation of an earlier (1994) Abrams article on the topic and of the broader claim that the Nazi Party was “entirely controlled” by gay men. Historian Jon David Wynecken at Grove City College also refuted the book, pointing out that Lively and Abrams did no primary research of their own, instead using out-of-context citations of some legitimate sources while ignoring information from those same sources that ran counter to their thesis.
The myth that the Nazis condoned homosexuality sprang up in the 1930s, started by socialist opponents of the Nazis as a slander against Nazi leaders. Credible historians believe that only one of the half-dozen leaders in Hitler’s inner circle, Ernst Röhm, was gay. (Röhm was murdered on Hitler’s orders in 1934.) The Nazis considered homosexuality one aspect of the “degeneracy” they were trying to eradicate.
When the National Socialist Party came to power in 1933, it quickly strengthened Germany’s existing penalties against homosexuality. Heinrich Himmler, Hitler’s security chief, announced that homosexuality was to be “eliminated” in Germany, along with miscegenation among the races. Historians estimate that between 50,000 and 100,000 men were arrested for homosexuality (or suspicion of it) under the Nazi regime. These men were routinely sent to concentration camps and many thousands died there.
In 1942, the Nazis instituted the death penalty for gay men. Offenders in the German military were routinely shot. Himmler put it like this: “We must exterminate these people root and branch. … We can’t permit such danger to the country; the homosexual must be completely eliminated.”
Paul, du bist recht! It should be Jawohl! I forgot much of my German, started speaking English at age three and never turned back. Have you been chanting Serenity now?
Nick is calm and serene to Paul…. Sounds a little too familiar….
Paul,
Homosexuality does not lead to beastiality….. Unless you are prone to swing that way….. Nor does homosexuality lead to pedophila…. Unless you swing that way already….. But you are good looking as you say… So… Who knows….. And your comment above is so true…. Some are just incapable of wisdom….. Even though they have a little knowledge…. Those folks are the most dangerous as they think they have wisdom…. Because they have the degree….Even cheese has to age before it’s considered good….
AY – you are clearly not following what i am writing or posting. Because I read all the posts, I know how you got where you are, but since you haven’t or don’t, you are putting words in my mouth. BTW, it is spelled ‘bestiality.’
Someone is getting a tad touchy today.
It’s not me. I am calm and serene. 😀
Repost
Next it was on to Röhm. A column of troops and cars containing Hitler, Rudolf Hess, and others, sped off toward Röhm and his men.
At this point, the story is often told (partly conceived by the Nazis) of Hitler arriving at the resort hotel about 6:30 a.m. and rushing inside with a pistol to arrest Röhm and other SA leaders.
However it is more likely the hotel was first secured by the SS before Hitler went near it. Hitler then confronted Röhm and the others and sent them to Stadelheim prison outside Munich to be later shot by the SS.
An exception was made in the case of Edmund Heines, an SA leader who had been found in bed with a young man. When told of this, Hitler ordered his immediate execution at the hotel.
A number of the SA leaders, including Röhm, were homosexuals. Prior to the purge, Hitler for the most part ignored their behavior because of their usefulness to him during his rise to power. However, their usefulness and Hitler’s tolerance had now come to an end. Later, their homosexual conduct would be partly used as an excuse for the murders.
annie,
Maybe somebody’s read Scott Lively’s book “The Pink Swastika: Homosexuality in the Nazi Party.”
From the Holocaust Encyclopedia
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007885
Röhm Purge
Excerpt:
Between June 30 and July 2, 1934, the Nazi Party leadership, on the order of Nazi Party Leader and Reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler, purged the leadership of the Nazi paramilitary formation, the Sturmabteilungen (Storm Troopers; SA). The Nazi leaders took advantage of the purge to kill other political enemies, primarily on the German nationalist right. Known as the “Night of the Long Knives” or “Operation Hummingbird,” the murders cemented an agreement between the Nazi regime and the German Army (Reichswehr) that enabled Hitler to proclaim himself Führer of National Socialist Germany and to claim absolute power.
BACKGROUND TO THE PURGE
By June 1934, the SA, led by longtime Hitler friend and SA Chief of Staff Ernst Röhm, had expanded to a force of nearly three million men. The SA significantly outnumbered the German Army, which the Treaty of Versailles had limited to 100,000 men. It had provided an intimidating and often violent presence as the Nazi Party rose to power during the 1920s and 1930s. After Hitler became chancellor in 1933, many political leaders, including President Paul von Hindenburg and Vice-Chancellor Franz von Papen, feared that the SA had become too powerful. Although the SA continued to provide key support to the Nazi regime as it consolidated its power into a dictatorship in 1933, the demands of its leadership to “finish” the Nazi revolution became a source of embarrassment and discomfort for Hitler in his dealings with the traditional German nationalist elites. The SA leadership sought to remove the elites from power and replace them in their positions with fanatical Nazis. Hitler, the Nazi Party leadership, and the leadership of the SS, a formation of the SA, understood, however, that the Nazi regime would have to work with the traditional elites to consolidate its power and to prepare the nation for a war of expansion.
SA dissatisfaction with what its leaders perceived to be the stagnating pace of the Nazi revolution threatened by the late winter and spring of 1934 to split the Nazi-Nationalist coalition. The ambition of the SA leaders to replace the officer corps of the Reichswehr and to replace the professional Army with a “People’s Army” became a threat to the Nazi regime itself, as the Army leaders responded by demanding the elimination of the SA as a condition for permitting the Nazi government to remain in power. Moreover, Röhm and his top commandants had lost the confidence of other key Nazi leaders, including Prussian Prime Minister Hermann Göring, Deputy Nazi Party Chief Rudolf Hess, Reich Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, and the SS leadership, Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich.
As early as April 1934, Himmler and Heydrich began to conspire with Göring to persuade Hitler to eliminate Röhm. In mid-June 1934, they planted rumors and evidence that Röhm was planning to overthrow the regime. Meanwhile, President von Hindenburg, the leadership of the Reichswehr, and Hitler’s conservative coalition partners, including Vice-Chancellor von Papen, issued warnings about the increasing radicalization of the Nazi regime. If the “revolutionary elements” of the Nazi regime were not brought under control, the Army leaders threatened to overthrow the Hitler government and place the country under martial law.
For all their radical rhetoric, neither Röhm nor his top commanders ever planned to seize power in Germany. Well aware of this, Hitler, who considered Röhm one of his few friends, procrastinated over a decision as tension increased towards the end of spring 1934 and the plot against Röhm took on a more defined shape. Playing for time, Hitler persuaded Röhm to order the top SA leadership to take an extended leave on June 8, 1934. On June 17, Vice-Chancellor von Papen gave a speech at the University Marburg that was highly critical of Nazi failure to maintain the rule of law and seemed to focus Nationalist opposition to the regime. Partly to forestall the formation of a viable nationalist opposition, but primarily to maintain the professional army, which he had incorporated into his planning for rearmament and military expansion, Hitler decided during the last week of June to eliminate the top SA leadership.
Elaine,
Yep, some folks love directing the discussion, heck the whole thread actually. Stray thoughts should remain caged! Ja voll Herr Paul?
AY,
What can I say?
*****
annie,
Don’t stray outside the lines. Don’t entertain any thoughts that some might frown upon.
Elaine, annie, AY – if you cannot read and comprehend then there is little I can do. There is an old saying in teaching, Elaine might know it, You can lead a student to knowledge, but you cannot make them think.
Elaine has started this thread and dropped several addition articles to direct our thinking. Is that who you are talking about annie? BTW, your German sucks 😉 I dropped out of German and I still know that is wrong.
Ho hummm.
nice – ‘were’ is the operative word. 🙂
Paul, You made the mistake of saying you were good lookin’. Just sayn’.
I am Paul, I’m also interjecting my own thoughts into the discussion. Lighten up, you always get yourself riled so easily? You don’t want to sound like ol’ Nick with his “Serenity now” silliness, do you? Hmmm? 😉
annie – if you followed the discussion carefully you would not be asking those questions. Hmmmmmmmmmmm