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lively, scott

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rww 10/29/2024

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Kyle Mantyla

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September 18, 2024 rww

* Scott Lively claims that “the term ‘homophobia’ and its derivatives are no less offensive and demeaning to defenders of the natural family and traditional sexual morality than the term ‘faggot’ is to men afflicted with SSADness [same-sex attraction disorder]”: “A slur is a slur, and none of them has a legitimate place in civil discourse.”

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Scott Lively - Wikipedia

8 24

scott Douglas Lively (born December 14, 1957) is an American activist, author, and attorney, who is the president of Abiding Truth Ministries, an anti-LGBT group based in Temecula, California. He was also a cofounder of Latvia-based group Watchmen on the Walls, state director of the California branch of the American Family Association, and a spokesman for the Oregon Citizens Alliance. He unsuccessfully attempted to be elected as the governor of Massachusetts in both 2014 and 2018.

Lively has promoted a hardline anti-gay interpretation of the Bible, been involved in the ex-gay movement, and been staunchly opposed to LGBT rights. In 1995, he co-authored The Pink Swastika, a book claiming gay people were prominent in the Nazi Party and were behind Nazi atrocities. He has called for the criminalization of "the public advocacy of homosexuality" as far back as 2007. Widely credited as an engineer of Uganda's Anti-Homosexuality Act, 2014, he gave a series of talks to Ugandan lawmakers before the drafting of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill.

Background

Lively was born and raised in the town of Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts, the oldest of six children. He became an alcoholic at the age of 12, an addiction he explains as a means to cope with an unhappy family situation. When Lively was 16, his father was committed to a mental institution, never to return. After graduating from high school in 1976, Lively spent the next 10 years "drifting around the United States, often homeless, sometimes sleeping under bridges and begging for spare change on street-corners."[1] Lively has stated in his autobiography: "I visited every one of the 48 continental states and logged over 25,000 miles by thumb, bus and train in my wandering. I didn't learn to drive a car until I was 25."[1]

Lively states that he became a born-again Christian on February 1, 1986, while staying at an alcohol treatment facility in Portland, Oregon, of which he has said, "It was a miracle which completely removed my desire for alcohol and drugs—something I had been unable to do for myself over several years of a desperate futile struggle to find some way to freedom."[1]

Political candidacies

Lively was an independent candidate for Governor of Massachusetts in the 2014 election.[2][3]

He ran again as a Republican candidate in the 2018 election.[4] At the Massachusetts Republican Party's state convention on April 28, 2018, he received support from nearly a third of the delegates present, exceeding the minimum requirement to appear on the ballot for the primary election on September 4, challenging fellow GOP incumbent Charlie Baker.[5][6] Lively lost the primary to Baker, with Lively receiving 36.1% support (98,214 out of 271,990 votes cast) and Baker the remaining 63.9%.[7]

Activities

Anti-abortion activism

In 1988, Lively began campaigning against abortion in Portland. In 1989, he became a spokesman for the Oregon Citizens Alliance and worked on the anti-abortion ballot measure for the 1990 United States midterm elections.[1]

Anti-homosexuality activism in the United States

In 1991, Lively, together with Oregon Citizens Alliance, shifted focus from abortion to homosexuality citing the "rapid advance of that agenda in Oregon".[1] In 1991, Lively assaulted Catherine Stauffer, throwing her against a wall and dragging her across the floor of a Portland church, at an Oregon Citizens Alliance event she had been trying to film.[8][9] In 1992 he was found liable for damages in excess of $31,000.[10][11][12]

Lively is the president of Abiding Truth Ministries, a conservative Christian organization based in Temecula, California[13] which is listed by the Southern Poverty Law Center as an anti-gay hate group.

Anti-homosexuality activism in Latvia and Russia

In 2006, Lively met with Latvian pastor Alexey Ledyaev to form an international anti-gay organization called Watchmen on the Walls, which the Southern Poverty Law Center has dubbed a hate group. Lively spent the summer of 2006 lecturing at Latvian universities and meeting with lawmakers, and preached at Ledyaev's New Generation church. During Lively's speaking engagements, he claimed that Western activists (backed by the European Union) were trying to infiltrate Latvian society and spread homosexuality, particularly to children.[14]

After his trip to Latvia, Lively then embarked on a fifty-city tour of Russia and other former Soviet republics, sponsored by Ledyaev's church, which had roughly 200 congregations and a regional TV channel. As Lively traveled from the Baltics to Siberia, he pressed officials to outlaw the "public advocacy of homosexuality" and urged officials from passing anti-discrimination laws. Eight of the nine countries he visited eventually weighed nationwide bans on "homosexual propaganda," and five (including Russia) either have bills pending or have since passed them into law. Lively takes partial credit for this development and calls Russia's gay propaganda ban his "proudest accomplishment."[14]

In 2007, Lively wrote a Letter to the Russian people in which he advocated criminalizing "the public advocacy of homosexuality".[15]

On August 30, 2013, in response to anti-LGBT legislation in Russia, Lively wrote an open letter addressed to Vladimir Putin saying, "You have set an example of moral leadership that has shamed the governments of Western Europe and North America and inspired the peoples of the world."[16]

Lively appeared on Russian television channel Russia-1's documentary titled Sodomin September 2014.[17]

Anti-homosexuality activism in Uganda

In March 2009, Lively, along with evangelical activists Don Schmierer and Caleb Lee Brundidge, arrived in Kampala to give a series of talks. "The theme of the event, according to Stephen Langa, its Ugandan organizer, was "'the gay agenda—that whole hidden and dark agenda'—and the threat homosexuals posed to Bible-based values and the traditional African family."[18] Lively gave a lengthy presentation to members of Uganda's parliament and cabinet, in which he laid out the argument that the nation's president and lawmakers would later use to justify Uganda's anti-gay crackdown; namely that Western agitators were trying to unravel Uganda's social fabric by spreading "the disease" of homosexuality to children.[14]

"[T]housands of Ugandans, including police officers, teachers and national politicians", reportedly attended the conference. Lively and his colleagues "discussed how to make gay people straight, how gay men often sodomized teenage boys, and how 'the gay movement is an evil institution' whose goal is 'to defeat the marriage-based society and replace it with a culture of sexual promiscuity.'"[18] He asserted that the 1994 Rwandan genocide "probably" involved gay men whom he referred to as "monsters."[14] Lively wrote days later that "someone had likened their campaign 'to a nuclear bomb against the gay agenda in Uganda.'"[18]

The talks inspired the development of the Uganda Anti-Homosexuality Act, a private member's bill, proposed in the Ugandan parliament.[19][20][21][22] The bill, submitted in November 2009, called for the death penalty in some cases, and was harshly criticized in the international community.[19][23][24]

Lively expressed disappointment that "the legislation was so harsh."[18] "Lively says he recommended an approach rooted in rehabilitation, not punishment, and says an anti-gay bill being considered by the Ugandan Parliament goes too far",[25] even though he himself is not opposed to criminalizing homosexuality:[26]

[M]y advice to the parliament was to go the other direction from what they did to actually go on a proactive positive message promoting the family, promoting marriage, et cetera, through the schools, and that if they were going to continue to criminalize homosexuality that they should focus on rehabilitation and not punishment. And I was very disappointed when the law came out as it is written now with such incredibly harsh punishments.[25]

Lively has stated that he will endorse the bill if the death penalty is removed.[27]

In March 2010, Lively wrote:

In my view, homosexuality (indeed all sex outside of marriage) should be actively discouraged by society—but only as aggressively as necessary to prevent the mainstreaming of alternative sexual lifestyles, and with concern for the preservation of the liberties of those who desire to keep their personal lifestyles private. Marriage-based culture served humanity very favorably during the centuries when homosexuality was disapproved but tolerated as a sub-culture in America, England and elsewhere. It has obviously not fared well in the decades since the so-called sexual revolution kicked open Pandora's Box and unleashed both rampant heterosexual promiscuity and "Gay Pride" on the world.

In March of this year I had the privilege of addressing members of the Ugandan parliament in their national assembly hall when the anti-homosexuality law was just being considered. I urged them to pattern their bill on some American laws regarding alcoholism and drug abuse. I cited my own pre-Christian experience being arrested for drunk driving. I was given and chose the option of therapy which turned out to be one of the best decisions of my life. I also cited the policy in some U.S. jurisdictions regarding marijuana. Criminalization of the drug prevents its users from promoting it, and discourages non-users from starting, even while the law itself is very lightly enforced, if at all.[28]

Lawsuit by Sexual Minorities Uganda v Scott Lively

:{On March 14, 2012, the Center for Constitutional Rights filed a federal lawsuit against Lively on behalf of a gay rights group, Sexual Minorities Uganda, under the Alien Tort Statute. The lawsuit accused Lively of violating international law by conspiring to persecute the Ugandan LGBT community. This first-of-its-kind lawsuit alleged that Lively's actions over the previous decade, in collaboration with some Ugandan government officials and Ugandan religious leaders, were responsible for depriving LGBT Ugandans of their fundamental human rights based solely on their identity; the lawsuit alleged that this fell under the definition of persecution under international law and was a crime against humanity.

Lively was to answer the allegations under the Crime Against Humanity of Persecution.[29] He has portrayed the Ugandan LGBT movement as "pedophilic" and "genocidal" and linked it "to the Nazis and Rwandan murderers".[26] Regarding the allegations of violating international law, he said, "That's about as ridiculous as it gets. I've never done anything in Uganda except preach the Gospel and speak my opinion about the homosexual issue."[30]}:

Pam Spees, a staff attorney for the Center for Constitutional Rights, said, "This is not just based on his speech. It's based on his conduct. Belief is one thing, but actively trying to harm and deprive other people of their rights is the definition of persecution."[30][31][32]

On August 14, 2013, an American federal judge ruled that the case against Scott Lively, by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) on behalf of Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG), a Uganda-based coalition of LGBT rights and advocacy groups, could move forward. U.S. District Court Judge Michael Ponsor rejected the defendant's jurisdictional claims to dismiss the case, ruling that the plaintiffs were on solid ground under international and federal law and that First Amendment arguments were "premature".[33]

In December 2014, the First Circuit Court of Appeals rejected another petition to dismiss the case.[34][35]

In the summer of 2016 the case continued and a summary judgement hearing before Judge Ponsor was scheduled for September 14, 2016 in Springfield, Massachusetts.[36]

In June 2017, Ponsor dismissed the case due to lack of jurisdiction, citing the 2013 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co.[37][38]

Reactions

Lively is listed in the Southern Poverty Law Center's "Extremist Files", which describes him as "actively propagandizing against LGBT people since the early 1990s."[39] Abiding Truth Ministries has been listed by the Southern Poverty Law Center as an anti-gay hate group.[40] Lively has, in turn, accused the SPLC of "hypocrisy and anti-Christian extremism".[41] The American Family Association, the California branch of which Lively has directed, is also regarded by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group.[42]

Susan Ryan-Vollmar, a communications consultant and a former newspaper editor, wrote on the day after the September 2018 primary that Gov. Baker's "unspoken strategy for dealing with Lively throughout the primary was to ignore him." Neither was there, she said, a significant "local outcry" against Lively's candidacy.[43]

Shift to anti-poverty activism

According to a January 2011 profile, Lively "has not changed his view that gays are 'agents of America's moral decline,' but he has refocused his approach to fit his parishioners in Springfield, Massachusetts", and "is toning down his antigay truths and shifting his focus to helping the downtrodden."[44]

The Pink Swastika

Kevin E. Abrams and Lively co-authored The Pink Swastika (1995). Abrams and Lively state in the preface that "homosexuals [are] the true inventors of Nazism and the guiding force behind many Nazi atrocities."[45]

The premise of Lively and Abrams' book has been criticized as a "pernicious myth",[46] "utterly false",[47] "a flat-out lie",[48] and several historians have questioned Abrams and Lively's claims and selective use of research.[46][49][50]

Personal life

Lively is married to Anne Gardner and has four children.[51][52]

Political views

In 2020 Lively claimed Donald Trump lost the election because he is pro-LGBT.[53]

Publications

See also

References

see edit war

Talk:Scott Lively - Wikipedia

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July 30, 2024 rww

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2 gay kids could be exec?

https://www.mediamatters.org/daily-wire/right-wing-media-figures-defending-ugandas-anti-gay-law-are-connected-organizations

no lnx vid

Right-wing media figures defending Uganda's anti-gay law are connected to organizations that helped inspire it

Special PROGRAMS

LGBTQ

WRITTEN BY MIA GINGERICH

PUBLISHED 04/17/23

Right-wing media reacted to passage of a Ugandan law imposing prison time for anyone identifying as LGBTQ by claiming that those condemning the law were imposing outside values on the African nation and suggesting that opposition from U.S. media and politicians amounted to colonialism. But the Ugandan law was at least partially spurred by Western influences, and many of the same conservative figures and outlets who made such assertions are themselves tied to Western organizations that have recently pushed anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and legislation in the African nation. 

In March, the Ugandan parliament passed a law that would enforce life in prison for anyone found to identify as LGBT, while also threatening lengthy prison terms for media groups, journalists, publishers, property owners, and essentially any individuals or institutions found to be supporting, advocating, or facilitating gay rights. The country previously courted international outrage after passing a similar law in 2013, which was later struck down by a Ugandan court for procedural reasons. The new law awaits the signature of Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, who recently signaled that he would sign the bill into law.

American organizations’ influence on Ugandan laws criminalizing LGBTQ people

Despite assertions from right-wing media that the laws are the organic outcome of anti-gay prejudice in Uganda, political attacks on LGBTQ existence in Uganda (and a number of other African nations) are fueled by Western nations and organizations.

The first laws criminalizing homosexuality were passed during British rule of Uganda, and the current focus on imprisoning and torturing members of the LGBTQ community was at least partially sparked by a 2009 meeting betweenright-wing American organizations Family Life Network and Exodus International and Ugandan political and religious leaders.The 2013 law was written by a Ugandan politician employed by the Fellowship Foundation, a secretive and highly influential conservative group from America 

After the law was repealed in 2014, Uganda continued to prosecute, imprison, and torture LGBTQ people under the original law passed by the British; in 2015, the prime minister of Uganda stated that the 2013 law wasn’t necessary “because we already have a law which was left by the British which deals with this issue.”

An even more extreme version of the 2013 law was reintroduced in 2020 but did not gain traction until last year, when a video purporting to be testimony from an “ex-gay” activist went viral on Twitter in Uganda. As detailed by journalist Caleb Okereke, the rhetoric in the video seems to stem in part from the 2009 meeting organized by U.S. organizations (namely the Family Life Network). As far-right Western religious groups promoted the 2013 law, extremist Pentecostal groups from the United States reportedly spent $26 million in recent years in Uganda advocating for passage of this newest bill.

Right-wing media claim condemnation of the law is colonialism

Prior to the bill’s passage, Breitbart published an article claiming it was an example of Uganda “resisting international pro-gay propaganda.” The piece was framed around supportive statements from one of the bill’s supporters. The article later asserted that the “United States has played a central role in pushing a pro-gay agenda contrary to Ugandan values.” That same article, along with one published after the law was passed, claimed that no one had been convicted of homosexuality since the country gained independence, an outright lie.

Right-wing media’s response to the bill, however, truly took shape after White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications John Kirby condemned the law during a press conference and mainstream outlets criticized the measure.

Heritage Foundation fellow Delano Squires reacted to the coverage by tweeting that media were trying to force nations like Uganda and Kenya (which also criminalizes LGBTQ existence) to “bend the knee to ‘Pride’.” Squires quote-tweeted a video of Jean-Pierre denouncing Uganda’s law, writing, “Perhaps Uganda doesn’t want its culture colonized by the West again. Maybe the people there would rather fly their own flag than yours.” Squires included pictures of Pride flags as well as Jean-Pierre standing with Assistant Secretary for Health Rachel Levine (a trans woman who has been harassed by right-wing media).

On the March 23 edition of his show, The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh claimed that those speaking out against the bill were “cultural colonialists” and mocked their concern over “protecting so-called LGBTQ rights.” Walsh went on to claim that opponents of the bill “don't think that Uganda has any particular right to govern itself and have its own culture and its own way of life.”

Video

Citation From the March 23, 2023, edition of Daily Wire's The Matt Walsh Show

A day later, The Daily Wire’s Michael Knowles followed Walsh’s lead, claiming on his show that “liberals paradoxically are the most inclined to impose their values on the world,” accusing Americans speaking out against the bill of “exporting … the LGBTQ flag and condoms and abortion and all the trappings of liberalism,” claiming it was “the new kind of colonialism.”

Video

Citation From the March 24, 2023, edition of Daily Wire's The Michael Knowles Show

New York Post columnist Miranda Devine wrote a column criticizing U.S. condemnation of the bill and attempted to excuse the extreme anti-LGBTQ policies of nations like Uganda, Hungary, and Russia, writing that “wokery is unpopular in a lot of foreign societies” and that those nations “regard gender ideology and the LGBTQ agenda as cultural imperialism that undermines their religious and family values,” asking, “Who are we to tell them otherwise?” Devine went on to describe the fight for LGBTQ rights abroad as “boutique concerns.”

The same right-wing figures are tied to organizations pushing anti-LGBTQ sentiment in Uganda

The Daily Wire

Scott Lively helped organize the 2009 conference and met with Ugandan lawmakers to spread anti-gay propaganda, and the right-wing group Liberty Counsel represented him in a lawsuit brought by Ugandan LGBTQ activists over his part in driving the persecution of gay people in the country. Prior to Liberty Counsel’s victory in the case — that freed Lively of any civil responsibility to the Ugandan victims of the law but recognized that he had contributed to persecution in Uganda and broken international law — Farris Wilks, the billionaire fracking tycoon who co-founded and still co-owns the Daily Wire, donated $1.5 million to Liberty Counsel.

Matt Walsh bragged on March 10 that his anti-LGBTQ movie, “What Is A Woman,” was screened for a select group of United Nations representatives from Africa, including representatives from Uganda. The screening was sponsored by theCenter for Family and Human Rights (C-Fam) and Family Watch International, an organization that works with and supports those responsible for anti-LGBTQ legislation in Uganda and Africa more broadly. A Daily Wire article on the screening quoted Peace Regis Mutuuzo, a Ugandan politician who supported the bill and who previously stated that Uganda “shall not tolerate homosexuality even for a day.”

Family Watch International also hosted the online portion of a conference in Uganda promoting the recently passed bill.

Heritage Foundation

The American Center for Law and Justice functions as “the key organization involved in ensuring African constitutions and laws criminalize homosexuality,” and it has been one of the most influential organizations in pushing anti-LGBTQ rhetoric on African countries. As detailed by researcher Kapya John Kaoma, ACLJ hires local staff in African nations, allowing them to “hide an American-based agenda behind African faces, giving the Christian Right room to attack gender justice and LGBTQ rights as a neocolonial enterprise imposed on Africans and obstructing meaningful critique of the U.S. Right’s activities.” ACLJ has also recently represented the Heritage Foundation in federal court. ACLJ’s chief counsel, Jay Sekulow, also happens to be the lawyer who represented Trump during the Senate impeachment trial.

Miranda Devine

Lively similarly has connections to the World Congress of Families, an organization whose efforts to spread anti-LGBTQ rhetoric in Africa — including at events attended by dignitaries from Uganda — coincided with the rise of anti-gay legislation. In 2013, the group was banned from the U.S. Senate meeting room by a Republican senator for their involvement in pushing anti-LGBTQ legislation in countries like Uganda and Russia. That same year, Miranda Devine, who at the time was writing anti-gay screeds for the conservative Australian outlet The Daily Telegraph, spoke at their conference. The conference’s topics included “What Families Are Best for the Economy?” and “The Impact on Children of Legalising ‘Same-Sex Marriage’.”

Right-wing media have a pattern of invalidating casualties of LGBTQ oppression while providing cover for those driving persecution abroad

This pattern of right-wing media discounting the understandable outrage over the persecution of LGBTQ people abroad — and in the process burying their ties to those who helped make that persecution a reality — is not a new development. The same extremist evangelical organizations helped create Russia’s anti-LGBTQ movement, and when the country’s invasion of Ukraine threatened the lives of trans people, their plight also became fodder for outlets like Daily Wire.

Whether or not their intent is rooted in protecting themselves and their wealthy donors, the damage of providing cover for those perpetuating this harm is apparent. Ugandan LGBTQ activists are murdered in their homes, and LGBTQ people in Uganda are facing exile from their home country as a result of a law ushered in by Western governments and organizations.

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