Tag: scott lively

Oklahoma City Church to host Scott Lively

As unbelievable as that sounds, Draper Park Christian Church is hosting Scott Lively for a weekend of seminars April 27-29, 2012.

On the church Facebook page, they prep their congregants with an article from MassResistance.

Upcoming DPCC keynote speaker featured in this article…thanks Stephen Black of First Stone Ministries. Church, the Lord said “Be alert and ready for service!”. This Christian lawyer Dr. Lively needs our fervent, effectual, righteous prayers.

It is not clear what the role of Stephen Black and First Stone Ministries is. If that Exodus affiliate has anything to do with this appearance, they would be flying directly in the face of the policy of the national Exodus ministry, who denounced the Anti-Homosexuality Bill as well as Lively’s role in Uganda. They also removed Lively’s article about the Pink Swastika from their website.

I want to believe that the Draper Park people don’t understand what they are getting into. They read information from MassResistance calling Lively a martyr, but they will not hear Lively’s real message until he is inside their doors.

Most likely, he will tell them that the Holocaust was animated by homosexuals and gays want to recruit their children. He may tell them that he doesn’t support forced therapy, but he won’t tell them what would happen to gays who refuse state-sponsored ex-gay therapy. He might tell them that he didn’t support the Uganda Anti-Homosexuality Bill but he might not be as candid as he was with Mariana Van Zeller here:

 

He might tell the church what he thinks causes homosexuality, as he did below to the Ugandans in 2009, but he probably won’t tell them that both Exodus and NARTH have removed his articles from their websites.

I know there other Christians of conservative theology who are grieved by this.  It is sad when Christians are tricked into thinking they are fighting evil when instead they mislead and misrepresent. Mr. Lively, as a Holocaust revisionist, should not have a platform in a Christian venue.

For more on the distortions and misleading presentation that is the Pink Swatiska, see this link.

WND: Lively sued over “biblically based beliefs”

Of course, WorldNetDaily would weigh in on the lawsuit against Scott Lively. As usual, WND slants the matter to misinform their audience. The article by Bob Unruh tells readers that Lively is being sued over

his biblically based religious beliefs that homosexuality is a sin, and his statements about his beliefs.

If you read the suit, you will find that the other people who went to Uganda with Lively (Don Schmierer and Caleb Brundidge) are not being sued. Those guys put out some misinformation too and indicated their belief that homosexuality is a sin but did not tell the audience that gays animated the Jewish Holocaust and were probably behind the Rwandan genocide as well. Those men did not tell the Ugandan audience that the best way to overcome public sympathy for gays is to portray gays as recruiters and threats to children.

Where does the Bible say that homosexuality is responsible for the Holocaust? For the Rwandan genocide? That gays are pedophiles? Are those Biblically based beliefs?

Even if one disagrees with the suit, the truth is that Lively is not being sued for his beliefs that homosexuality is a sin. There are many evangelicals who believe that in the U.S. and in Uganda who also abhor the Anti-Homosexuality Bill and tell the truth about their GLBT fellow citizens.

Lively is quoted extensively in the article but the bringers of the suit are not interviewed. When the lawsuit is cited, Unruh neglects to cite Lively comments and actions that are the basis of the suit. Here is one sugar coated example:

The lawsuit cites Lively’s visits to Uganda in 2002 to campaign against pornography at a conference to illustrate his responsibility for subsequent violence, as well as the Ugandan proposal to make illegal the publishing of pornography for the purpose of promoting homosexuality.

A WND reader would get the impression that Lively was combating porn in Uganda and/or that the Anti-Homosexuality Bill was about stopping gay porn. At the least, WND should link to the suit, but of course, they don’t.

For those interested, the suit is here.

 

Human Rights group sues Scott Lively over persecution of gays in Uganda

Today, the Center for Constitutional Rights filed a federal lawsuit against Scott Lively on behalf of Sexual Minorities Uganda over Lively’s activities in fostering persecution against gays.

You can find the filing and more background at CCR’s website.

CCR is basing the suit on accusations of violating the Alien Tort Statute (28 USC 1350) which states in sum: “The district courts shall have original jurisdiction of any civil action by an alien for a tort only, committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States.”

The filing makes a strong case that Lively’s work in Uganda has systematically, since 2002, led to persecution of LGBT people in Uganda. Lively, according to this New York Times article, thinks the suit is ridiculous, adding, “I’ve never done anything in Uganda except preach the Gospel and speak my opinion about the homosexual issue. There’s actually no grounds for litigation on this.”

This will be an interesting case to watch. I can imagine other suits based on advocacy of persecution of other minorities, e.g., religious minorities, coming forward if this is successful. For instance, if there are people in the U.S. who support or work with foreign entities to limit religious freedom in other nations, perhaps religious minorities would bring suit here.

The Pink Swastika and NARTH

In 2009, I reported that NARTH (National Association for the Research and Therapy of Homosexuality) had removed all but one reference to Scott Lively’s works from their website. That reference was a note in their newsletter which described Lively’s short speech at the 2005 NARTH convention where he donated money to the organization on behalf of his Pro-Family Charitable Trust. As an aside, Lively has donated at least $2000 to NARTH since 2003.
In fact, Lively’s involvement with NARTH goes back further than his donations. In 1995, Lively spoke at the NARTH conference and presented his signature theme – homosexuals started and animated the Nazi party. In that paper still available on the NARTH website, Lively wrote, “In many respects, the SA was a creation of Germany’s homosexual movement, just as the Nazi Party was in many ways a creation of the SA.”
The problem is not that Lively documents the existence of homosexuals among the Nazis; that much was true. For instance, Ernst Roehm and others in his orbit were gay or bisexual. However, Lively errs by saying the “homosexual movement” created the Nazi party, as if the inevitable outcome of a movement for civil rights for gays is national socialism. See this link for more on the Pink Swastika.
In fairness, the paper does not show up in a search conducted on NARTH’s website (actually very little available on the website comes up from using that search engine). However, it does come up in various Google searches.
Although NARTH is not making this article easy to find, it is still available and demonstrates to me something about the DNA of the organization. Despite claiming to be a scientific organization, the leadership has invited anti-gay activists to present their views since the early days of the organization. Scott Lively favors legal restrictions on homosexual behavior and free speech surrounding advocacy for gay rights. At the most recent conference, NARTH featured Sharon Slater, a leading proponent of criminalization.
 
 

Things get ugly in Illinois

According to a World Net Daily report, a couple of bricks were thrown through the window of the Christian Liberty Academy which hosted the Americans for Truth About Homosexuality banquet earlier this evening. The vandalism was conducted in the early morning hours today with an email sent to a Chicago area news source.
No organization has taken responsibility for the incident which may mean that the attack was conducted by someone acting independently.
The email focused on Scott Lively, who was the recipient of an award at the AFTAH banquet.
This is an ugly episode and I hope those responsible for the vandalism are caught and prosecuted.
Reaction from WND readers to the attack reveals ugliness of another kind. One reader John Acord said gays should be confined to mental institutions (see comment below):

And then there is this comment from John Mccord:

Actually, Scott Lively and Mr. Acord are more on the same wavelength since Lively says he advised the Ugandan government to set up national gay rehab programs. He told WND this as well:

My advice to the MPs regarding the law they were contemplating but had not yet drafted was to focus on rehabilitation and not punishment. I urged them to become the first government in the world to develop a state-sponsored recovery system for homosexuality on the model we have in the United States for alcoholism.

I wonder why that suggestion would upset gays?
In any case, there is plenty of ugly to go around.
UPDATE: The comments I posted above have been removed from the thread at WND. However, if you look down the list, you can find more like them.
Chicago Tribune has a blurb out this morning in their “Breaking News” section. Since the story had already been reported several places, I assume they have a section for news about broken things.