Scott Lively, hate group leader extraordinaire, speaking at a church in California:
I want to just attack this idea that people have raised that homosexuality is just another sin because that’s not true and the more that we embrace that, the more that we accept that as a concept, the more distant we are from understanding the warning that God gives us when we see this phenomenon in our society.
Gay is especially bad! And not only because gay is the thing that Scott Lively is unnaturally fixated with!
When you see the gay pride parade going down the street in the major cities, what banner are they flying over them? They’re flying the banner of the rainbow. What is the rainbow? The rainbow is God’s covenant with man never to destory the Earth by water again …
God never promised not to send a flood of gays to cover the earth. Loophole!
So there’s an enormous warning there and, at the same time, we’re also given a clue as to what’s happening with apostasy in the modern age when people will raise the rainbow flag – and there’s a passage in Isiah, I forget the chapter and verse, that says “they parade their sin like Sodom.” And that is what is exactly going on with people who have defined themselves by this particular behavior and lifestyle. They parade their sin like Sodom. And they do it under the rainbow banner almost as if they’re saying “God, you can do nothing to us” because they don’t believe that Sodom was destroyed because of homosexuality so they aren’t learning the lesson from that.
Because the only way you can believe that Sodom was destroyed because of homosexuality is if you A. Have been taught that repeatedly and never looked at the verses for yourself, B. Only halfway glance at a bad translation and also do not own or know how to use a concordance, as the actual sin of Sodom is explained fourteen times throughout the Bible, and it’s not Gay, or C. Are like Scott Lively, and have such a weird, unhinged hatred of gay people that, even though you’re theoretically capable of studying the text for yourself, you simply continue lying because it props up your smelly bigotry.
In fifty years we have seen this tiny group of people – they really only represent about two percent of the population – that has grown from being a reviled subculture to now having more power in the legislatures and courtrooms of the world than the Christian church does.
Uh, no.
In fifty years! Nothing has ever grown that fast globally, nothing. Not Islam, not Darwinism, not Marxism, nothing has ever grown that fast. Which shows you that this is a spiritual phenomenon that is unparallelled and that’s why God has selected it, singled out this particular behavior to be the indicator of extreme apostasy, the furthest edge of deviance and the warning sign that things are in really, really bad shape.
Islam is a huge, ancient world religion with over a billion adherents. Darwinism is what morons call “evolutionary biology,” and as such, its “spread” is referred to as “education.” Etc. But none of these things have grown faster than GAAAAAAAY, says Scott.
Perhaps it’s more that none of those things keep Scott Lively awake shivering at night, and that’s why he views the gays as more powerful.
Oy. The more he talks, the more I’m inclined to feel sorry for him. Right Wing Watch has the video.
By now, you know the story. A few weeks ago, Porno Pete got twelve or thirteen of his closest bigots together for a Spaghetti-O’s dinner of some sort out in the Chicago suburbs, for the purposes of honoring super-bigot Scott Lively, the main proponent of the lie that gays caused the Holocaust. Scott Lively, of course, had a huge hand in Uganda’s “Kill the Gays” legislation. Anyway, some ne’er-do-well gay “activists,” or possibly Porno Pete’s own people [who knows?] decided to make a pathetic situation more pathetic by throwing a couple of bricks through the window of the establishment where the soiree was to be held. This is, of course, worse than 9/11 and Pearl Harbor and Carrot Top, combined. At first Peter was crying that it was a “hate crime,” which it isn’t, as bigotry is not actually a protected class under hate crimes laws. It’s a simple, stupid, misguided act of vandalism. Oh, but now, craving more attention from the ordeal, he is calling it a “terror-attack.” Really. Here he is, setting up a video from his butchest friend, Matt “Bam Bam” Barber, the one he can always rely on to be his manly defender when people hurt his feelings:
Note that at the time of this recording, Barber was relying on early reports coming from the Oct. 15th terror-attack on Christian Liberty Academy, in which it was feared that the pro-homosexual assailants had entered the building and perhaps created water damage. Actually, they did not enter the building, and the vandalism that did occur was created by large paver bricks thrown through the glass doors and windows of CLA (accompanied by notes threatening further violence).
Yeah, bricks thrown through a window when nobody is around do not constitute an act of “terrorism.” Sorry. I’m in complete agreement that whoever did it — and if it was gays of ANY sort, you ought to be ashamed of yourselves for being such grade-A dumbasses — was in the wrong, but this melodrama really gets under my skin, especially when I have to report seemingly every week on some gay kid who killed himself because he was bullied so badly by his schoolmates, family, church or community into feeling he had nothing to live for. Considering that those sorts of messages start with people like Porno Pete and Scott Lively and their perverted interpretation of the Bible, and then trickle down to those kids, I’m just having a hard time writing about this “terror-attack” with a straight face.
The video Porno Pete was setting up is from the Liberty Counsel, and features a really pathetic, fearful conversation between Matt Barber and Mat Staver. They discuss the incident, and then go on to ratchet up the victim mentality by saying that the Southern Poverty Law Center, by labeling them hate groups [for their vicious anti-gay bigotry, and also the fact that they are pathological liars], is doing the same thing to them that the Nazis did to the Jews.
Seriously. I would cry them a river, but my eyes are too busy rolling into the back of my skull. Why do wingnut men always come across as such sissies?!
Staver: This aggressive homosexual agenda is not about tolerance, it’s about dominance. And the more emboldened they get, the more laws that they get, the more vocal they become, the more hostile they become, the more aggressive they become, and the more violent, in this particular case, they become.
Barber: Americans for Truth, as well as Liberty Counsel for that matter, is one of those flashpoints, they have been unfairly labeled a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, a hard left-wing extremist organization that uses smears in order to label Christian organizations that take a principled stand on the biblical model of sexual morality in love, speak God’s truth in love, they label them hate groups. But really, they are fanning the flames of this kind of violence with their rhetoric, by labeling organizations a hate group. And they’re partly responsible for this, indirectly, I’m not going to say they’re directly responsible …
Staver: Well, when you go out and label somebody a hate group you think of the KKK …
Barber: It emboldens these people …
Staver: It also, it begins, you know, it’s the same thing that happened in the Nazi Holocaust where they start to just demonize and stigmatize and then at some point in time you don’t even think that someone’s human and then, you know, we look at it and our consciences are shocked but if you look at how it ultimately began where they began to just demonize and dehumanize them, that’s what’s happening with this labeling of hate groups.
‘We’d Be Delighted to Expose Her Bigotry in a Court of Law and the Court of Public Opinion,’ Says TWO’s Wayne Besen
BURLINGTON, Vt. – Truth Wins Out responded today to a frivolous lawsuit threat by Linda Harvey, an anti-gay talk radio host and the president of Mission America. Harvey warned Truth Wins Out of possible legal action in a Twitter post this afternoon. Harvey was upset about a column that TWO’s Executive Director Wayne Besen wrote about her titled, “The Most Homophobic Woman in America.” She was also angry that the column linked her to supporting Uganda’s draconian “Anti-Homosexuality Bill,” which includes the death penalty for “aggravated homosexuality.”
“Bring it on,” says Truth Wins Out’s Executive Director Wayne Besen. “We hope that such a case would be aired on television so we can expose Harvey’s vile words in a court of law and in the court of public opinion. It’s bizarre that Harvey is upset because we quoted her verbatim, which tells me that on some level she is ashamed of her own hateful rhetoric.”
Truth Wins Out has obtained the services of notable Fort Lauderdale attorney Norm Kent, who is also the publisher of South Florida Gay News. Kent says it is likely that Harvey’s threat is empty because her claim has no merit.
“Linda Harvey’s legal threats are frivolous and if they rested on any shakier legal ground they would be measured by the Richter Scale. I can only surmise her tweets are a pathetic and desperate ploy for attention,” said attorney Norm Kent. “We look forward to her next move and will take appropriate action.”
The centerpiece of Harvey’s tweet was that she “never advocated for killing anyone” in Uganda. While it is true that Harvey never explicitly said, “I want to kill gay people in Uganda,” she admits during a March 2010 speech at Grosse Pointe, Michigan tha
t she and anti-gay activist Scott Lively actually worked on the anti-homosexuality bill, which would imprison and murder LGBT people in that country. According to Harvey’s speech:
“The fact they are re-criminalizing homosexuality is (a) their business, (b) it is patronizing for white Westerners to be telling these folks — they are seeing George Soros funded gay groups going into Uganda. They are all through the schools, lots of promotion to kids. Poor kids, poor kids are being offered money and favors and gifts to have sex. That’s exploitation. That’s sex trafficking. And it’s being done mostly homosexually. By Western homosexuals coming in and trying to get involved in Uganda.”
“Harvey was either remarkably ignorant or clearly lying through her teeth at the Michigan event when she falsely claimed that the intent of Uganda’s ‘Kill the Gays’ bill was only to punish pedophiles,” said TWO’s Wayne Besen. “In reality, LGBT people could be murdered by the state for a charge called ‘aggravated homosexuality’ which basically means they were accused of having sexual relations on more than one occasion. In her talk, Harvey clearly supported imprisonment and possibly capital punishment for LGBT people in Uganda when she flippantly stated that, ‘The fact they are re-criminalizing homosexuality is (a) their business.’ Obviously, the business she breezily refers to is the hunting down of innocent LGBT Ugandans for the purpose of imprisonment or worse.”
Truth Wins Out’s Evan Hurst and John Becker compiled a short list of quotes from Harvey so readers can see the deep intensity of her anti-LGBT views.
According to her bio: Harvey hosts a radio show on the Salem Network station in Columbus, OH, (WRFD 880 AM), and airs a weekly commentary on the Moody Radio Network. She is also a frequent guest on talk shows coast to coast, a regular columnist for World Net Daily and is interviewed by state and national media outlets. Harvey has been a conference speaker at numerous pro-family meetings including conferences held by Concerned Women for America, Focus on the Family, Heartbeat International, American Family Association, Americans for Truth, and XChange. In addition, Mrs. Harvey has spoken on Capitol Hill and testified numerous times before state legislative committees. She serves on the National Pro-Family Forum and the Ohio Pro-Family Forum.
Truth Wins Out is a non-profit organization that fights anti-LGBT religious extremism and the “ex-gay” myth. TWO specializes in turning information into action by organizing, advocating and fighting for LGBT equality.
Linda Harvey is just a frail, sweet flower, you guys! She would never be hateful, dishonest, disgusting or homophobic!
For instance, she wasn’t giving aid and comfort to the Ugandan authors of the infamous “kill the gays” bill when she lied thusly [except it sort of seems like she is!]:
Linda Harvey, leader of Mission America, claims legislation pending in Uganda , the anti-homosexuality bill, does not include a death penalty provision for homosexuality. Instead, Harvey says, the bill was designed to stop “Western homosexuals” from exploiting Uganda children.
“This has been mis-portrayed– and please clear this up. Uganda is criminalizing rape of children, and I think that a lot of people would say hmmm maybe death penalty for rape of children — heterosexually or homosexually,” Harvey said in an interview following the speech in Grosse Pointe, Michigan.
“The fact they are re-criminalizing homosexuality is (a) their business, (b) it is patronizing for white Westerners to be telling these folks — they are seeing George Soros funded gay groups going into Uganda. They are all through the schools, lots of promotion to kids. Poor kids, poor kids are being offered money and favors and gifts to have sex. That’s exploitation. That’s sex trafficking. And it’s being done mostly homosexually. By Western homosexuals coming in and trying to get involved in Uganda.”
Now, I am always willing to consider the possibility that Fundamentalists are illiterate. Because even a perfunctory reading of the Uganda bill, or an honest desire to understand the bill, easily shows that part of the bill clearly stated that the death penalty could be given for “aggravated homosexuality,” which was decidedly not “child rape.” Warren Throckmorton explains all that here. Here is the thing, though: in that same interview, she said that she “loves” Scott Lively and had worked with him on that very bill! Seriously, go up to the top and click on that link. That was a Truth Wins Out exclusive audio-recorded interview, folks.
Here are some other examples of Linda Harvey being totally not hateful, homophobic, disgusting or dishonest:
1. On the subject of anti-bullying programs and GLSEN, Linda Harvey, who gives aid and comfort to the people who bully gay kids to death, whether they are adults or children, says this:
“GLSEN poses as a ‘gay rights’ and ‘anti-bullying’ group for youth, going to bat for them on issues like discrimination. But GLSEN is actually a threat to children, unless parents don’t care about their kids being drawn into early deviant sexual activity, or learning to approve of sinful, God-defying behaviors without the parents’ knowledge. To put it bluntly, when you think GLSEN, think ‘children and bodily fluids.’ Yes, it’s that bad. Behind GLSEN’s window-dressing rhetoric about safe schools, bigotry, ‘homophobia’, oppression, and concerns about harassment, lies the reality: advocacy of actual homosexual sex, sometimes implicit, sometimes very explicit, even for young kids. And sometimes it’s with adults.”
2. Here is Linda Harvey claiming that gay people don’t exist, based on absolutely no science at all:
“Once you buy into the ‘born that way’ idea then self-delusion is not that far behind. There’s no evidence there are different humans called LGBTQ people, these are sinful behaviors, not in-born identities. And people do not have to cower in fear or depression or shame, if you truly love God you accept His will knowing it’s best for your life and it’s His design that will make you happy. God’s grace can and will help anyone who resolves to go beyond these feelings, to put them aside, and decide that He is sovereign.”.
3. Here is Linda Harvey sticking her head even further into the sands of reality-denying Christian Fundamentalist Ignorance, on the same subject:
“There’s one big fact that’s not backed up. There is no proof that there’s ever anything like a gay, lesbian or bisexual or transgendered child, or teen or human. One of the other things you’re gonna see as I mentioned is a big campaign GLSEN’s gonna roll out this year calling for ‘respect,’ respect! Not just for people, but for homosexual lifestyle. The PR campaign to hold up gay as a good thing: the lifestyle, not the person, because there are no such humans.“
4. Here is Linda Harvey saying that gay people shouldn’t be allowed to be teachers:
“Kids should not be put in the confusing position of having a teacher they like and respect in many ways who’s also known to be practicing homosexual behavior. Of course that’s where many of our children in public schools today find themselves because the National Education Association not only allows but applauds and defends openly homosexuality and even transvestite teachers. The fact is that no homosexuality should be in our schools, period. When people leave that behavior behind, then they might be qualified for a job involving children. Out and proud homosexuals should not have jobs that involve children. I know that’s not the current policy in many schools but it should be.”
Amusing that she acknowledges that kids might like their gay teachers. WHO DO NOT EXIST, remember.
5. Now, we’re going off into full on tin-foil hat, black helicopter DSM-IV territory, as we have Linda Harvey claiming that teachers’ unions are paying for kids to be turned into gays:
“The group’s website says they raise money for teen scholarships given to those kids who consider themselves homosexual. The past few years the scholarship winners have not simply been young people persuaded to be in this deviant lifestyle, but are students who have unfortunately bought the party line and become involved in activism projects like homosexual clubs and the pro-homosexual Day of Silence in their schools. And so now kids are given financial incentives to be actively engaged in both the political goals of homosexuals as well as the risky behavior. This is appalling. In these tough economic times many kids will be struggling to get money together for college and here we have a really sleazy connection for them to make. It’s just one more outrageous thing going on with our teachers’ unions.”
6. Jumping further over the shark, Linda Harvey once claimed that gays caused the mortgage crisis. No, stop laughing, you guys! This is a very serious woman! With a serious passion! For hating people! Who don’t exist!
“Just as a child is far less likely to suffer abuse in the home of his/her married, heterosexual parents, so the opposite is true. Where the structure is sin-based, other sins are more likely to scurry in through the cracks. Substance abuse and self-destruction accompany sexual deviance. And some of this means poor decisions about finances.”
Ooooookay. You want more? Okay, there’s more!
7. How terrifying is marriage equality in New York? THIS terrifying, according to Ms. Linda:
“This ‘freedom’ will include much more than a perpetual pansexual pagan party. It will, and already does, include libel, slander, intimidation, corruption of youth, revolt in congregations, suppression of parental rights, revision of language, disease, loss of employment and loss of life. Oh, and did I mention public sex, the porn explosion and public nudity? Welcome to entitlement sex. The New York crowd was on board with this concept, too, erupting into applause for Obama at all the appropriate moments. And why not? They live in a city that has already earned its Good Sodomizing Seal of Approval. More than 36,000 men who have sex with men in New York City are currently living with HIV/AIDS. This bleak prognosis casts a shadow on these ‘marriages,’ but no one wants to think about that.”
Perpetual Pansexual Pagan Party! You see, not only does Linda cower in fear of gays and claim to have a hand in working on legislation that includes a death penalty provision for gays, she also writes tongue twisters, you guys! Life of the party!
I still haven’t seen the “porn explosion” that marriage equality has brought to New York, but I find it rude that she’s using “explosion” language about New York so close to the 10th anniversary of 9/11.
8. Eight Is Enough. Did you know that all liberals hate everything “Judeo-Christian?” According to Linda, liberals also hate the West! Even though most of us live here and the West wouldn’t include most of the First World countries on the planet without liberalism. Also, we hate Jesus, and the more liberal we are, the more we…wait for it…your brain will fry if you try to find the “logic” in this, so just accept it for the wingnut stupidity that it is…LOVE RADICAL ISLAM. Yeah, it’s that whole “the enemy of my enemy” crap, and it works on low information voters [i.e. fundamentalists] because they’re frankly woefully ignorant of liberalism, feminism, sexuality and radical Islam. All they know is that they’re afear’d of all of those things. Stupid is as stupid does, y’all:
“[People on the left] all hate the actual Judeo-Christian heritage and those who uphold it. They hate the West… they hate the freedom. And… it’s a spiritual thing. They hate Jesus Christ. And so this is why you have the homosexual and pro-abortion feminists remaining silent or actually being apologists for radical Islam. Hello — they would be the first people that, you know, in an Islamic state would come under some level of oppression. Why wouldn’t they be afraid of these people? Because they all hate Jesus Christ and his followers.”
So there you have it: a Children’s Treasury of Linda Harvey being totally, completely NOT hateful, homophobic, disgusting or dishonest. Except that she really, really is all of those things. Constantly. This is why Wayne branded her The Most Homophobic Woman in America this week.
Why this post? Oh, she’s whining about suing Wayne for being mean to her by giving her actual words a wider audience than her little wingnut radio show has ever had previously.
Jim Burroway at Box Turtle Bulletin writes that anti-gay extremist and pretend sociologist Paul Cameron is about to travel to Moldova to help haters there prevent an antidiscrimination law from going on the books. He’s spoken out on this topic in Moldova in 2009, claiming that to allow people with a “nontraditional sexual orientation” their rights would contribute to a “demographic catastrophe” in Moldova owing to the low birthrate there. Christian lawyer Alex Spak of Britain seems to be making a name for himself in the country with a similarly hateful message.
Burroway speculates that, in light of Scott Lively’s recent visit to the country for the same purpose, Moldova is becoming a special project for Christian exporters of hatred similar to Uganda.
Vandals threw bricks through the window of a Christian school in suburban Chicago Saturday, the morning before a scheduled appearance by well-known conservative Christian activist against homosexuality, Scott Lively.
According to the Chicago Sun-Times, plastic bags containing bricks scrawled with messages like “Shut down Lively” smashed multiple windows of Chicago Christian Liberty Academy as reported by the school’s pastor Calvin Lindstorm.
Lively, president of Abiding Truth Ministries and a strongly conservative voice against homosexuality, was scheduled to speak before a gathering Saturday evening hosted by Naperville-based Americans For Truth Against Homosexuality, a group that according to its website dedicates itself to exposing the homosexual activist agenda.
We, of course, know that the work of Scott Lively, as he spreads malicious lies to poorly informed people in order to demonize LGBT people, presumably fulfilling some strange psychological void in his life, is far more dangerous to humanity than a few bricks thrown through a window. Also, from the report, there is absolutely no evidence that this was done by gay activists. Regardless, it was a stupid act, and again, not helping, as Fundamentalist Christian Bigots are professional victims. Cue Porno Pete:
AFTAH leader Peter LaBarbera said he considered the incident to be a hate crime committed by gay activists.
“If this would have occurred at a gay church, there would have been a public outcry,” LaBarbera said in the Sun-Times.
Whine.
For something to be defined as a “hate crime,” it has to be shown that it was hatred against, in this case, hateful bigots, that motivated the crime. Unfortunately for Pete, while Christianity and all other religious beliefs are protected under hate crimes laws [as they should be], simply being a malodorous bigot is not.
For instance, when people, motivated by religious anti-gay bigotry that trickles down through society, assault or kill gay people, that is a hate crime. Our side, of course, is still the only one with a bodycount.
One thing’s for sure, though: Pete’s little hate banquet got more press coverage than they ever would have on their own, if this incident hadn’t happened. Just sayin’.
Scott Lively, who is probably the greatest purveyor of hatred and lies [quantity, not quality] against the LGBT community in the United States, and who I think is associated with more hate groups at one time than anyone else, has farted some new words onto the internet at WingNutDaily. Let us mock them for a minute and then do something more worthwhile:
‘Gay’ culture war: It’s nearly lost
Yep, for haters and liars, it is. That’s the headline, by the way. As if he needed to write any more words…
The watchman’s walls have been broken and breached, the village is in flames, and triumphal “gay” culture warriors are leading a long string of young prisoners by their necks into the woods. Most disturbingly, many of the captives, including some of the children of these still sleepy-eyed Christian parents, seem happy to go.
Oh, he is so melodramatic. This is how he describes the fact that most young adults and teens think their fundamentalist parents’ anti-gay bigotry is weird and unhinged. Anyway, I would argue that those who are still being railroaded into the Christian wingnut lifestyle are those who are “captive,” as they have to be taught to deny reality at every turn in order to sustain their belief system.
Blah blah blah about the homosexical agenda, and then:
I’m old enough to remember the debate about whether homosexuals should be allowed to be teachers at all, let alone allowed to punish students for disagreeing with the class-time advocacy of their sexual lifestyle. I remember the protestations from the pro-homosexual side, that “gays and lesbians just want the right to be left alone. They would NEVER interject their private lives into the classroom.” They all lied, and we believed them, and now our children and grandchildren are being forced to celebrate “gay” culture under penalty of law.
He wishes people were still debating whether gays could be teachers. He wishes the debate was centered around ANYTHING AT ALL that doesn’t make him look like a gay-obsessed loon with deep psychological scars.
More melodrama and angry jazz hands:
That is the end game for the “gays.” The final stage of their agenda, which has always been about taking control of things, is the power to punish dissent: to silence or crush their detractors.
To crush them [!!!], like in video games or World of Warcraft or, haha, Red Dawn, or, well, whatever fantasy world crap Scott Lively is immersing himself in these days. Wolverines!!!!1111!
It is the same issue, my friends. “Gay marriage,” “gay” curriculum, “gay” parades, “gay” TV shows, “gay” soldiers, “gay” adoption, “gay” diseases, “gay” recruitment and on and on. So many seemingly separate issues that are really just one issue: the unnatural, dysfunctional, personally and socially destructive phenomenon of homosexual sin.
He has “gay” in scare quotes all the time, because what he really wants to say is “struggling-with-unwanted-same-sex-attraction marriage, struggling-with-unwanted-same-sex-attraction curriculum, struggling-with-unwanted-same-sex-attraction parades, struggling-with-unwanted-same-sex-attraction TV shows, struggling-with-unwanted-same-sex-attraction soldiers, struggling-with-unwanted-same-sex-attraction adoption, struggling-with-unwanted-same-sex-attraction diseases, struggling-with-unwanted-same-sex-attraction recruitment, and SO ON. This is why Scott Lively should stay away from writing. His prose is clunky and poor. And also melodramatic. Extremely, extremely melodramatic.
I’m not going to add here how much I really love homosexuals and just hate their sin.
The first step to embracing your status as a hate group leader is to drop the bullsh*t euphemisms about “love.” Somebody’s been reading his David Duke, I see!
As a question of public policy it really shouldn’t matter what I think about the perpetrators, just whether I am telling the truth about their agenda.
AND Scott Lively is an unhinged liar. All credible historians who have examined his work say it is so. But Scott’s standard isn’t the truth. It’s weirdness and melodramatic hatred.
I don’t want to reinforce the ridiculous assumption that Christians need to offer a disclaimer to prove they aren’t haters.
I know, that whole “Jesus is love” crap is sooooooooo 2,000 years ago. It’s high time fundamentalists just drop that whole “Christian” moniker anyway, as it gets in the way of their agenda.
I cringe even writing these words because I know the wrath I am inviting on myself.
Victim. Complex.
The homosexual agenda represents an existential threat to Christian civilization and we’re in the final phase of the war, losing badly. It all hinges upon you, Christian reader.
The Scott Livelys of the world are so close to calling for outright violence, it’s not even funny. They’ll get there, sometime in the next few years, I predict. Anyway, “Christian reader,” you heard Scott’s call. Time to get all whiny and melodramatic with it! Or, you know, wingnut fundamentalist Christians could just start the hard work of learning to act like grown-ups in a secular society where all of our success is dependent on how well we play with others.
Scott Lively’s name is almost synonymous with “unbridled, unhinged hate” at this point. We all know that he’s got his paws on quite a few of the SPLC-designated anti-gay hate groups; that he’s a professional liar to a pathological degree, going so far as to write a completely discredited revisionist book called The Pink Swastika, which seeks to cast gays as the creators of the Nazi movement; and that he traveled to Uganda early last year to, among other things, inform his rapt audience that killer homosexuals were “probably” involved with the Rwandan genocide next door. That last lie is almost perversely funny here, in a society with access to education and knowledge, but in Uganda, it’s a deadly lie. In short, we know that Scott Lively is a sick man.
Jim Burroway has written an exhaustive profile of Lively that all should read and then bookmark for future reference. It describes things like I mentioned above, but it also goes into details I didn’t know, pieces of the mosaic that really give insight into how and why he ended up being the detestable character he is today. For instance, his family background:
He is the oldest of six children, and his father developed a mental illness when Lively was young. Lively himself became an alcoholic at the age of twelve. For the next sixteen years, he said, he couldn’t hold a job. He slept under bridges and begged for money on the streets. A brother and a sister, he said, “went into homosexuality,” and another sister “wasn’t able to enter into marriage until she was in her forties because of the pain of the family life that we had.” Finally, said Lively, “[I] got down on my knees and surrendered my life to Jesus Christ. I was healed in an instant. I never had another desire to drink or use drugs ever again. When I got up off my knees, I was clean and healed.”
Lively became involved in antigay activism because of two people who were, he said, “very close to me”—a four-year-old boy and a nineteen-year-old man, who, Lively said, molested the boy: “And I saw what happened to that little child. He was transformed [from] a sweet and innocent person into a tortured and tormented child, filled with anger and rage. And he never recovered from it.” The nineteen year old, Lively said, “is still living in a gay lifestyle in Los Angeles, California. He’s an active homosexual and he’s active in a church that endorses what’s called ‘gay theology.’”
So basically, Scott took all his past pain and rage and decided to use the LGBT community as a scapegoat, instead of actually trying to work through said pain and rage. Of course, the second paragraph, if it’s even true [again, Lively is a pathological liar], has absolutely nothing to do with LGBT people. If it’s a true story, it’s a tragedy, and the guy should have been punished to the fullest extent of the law, just as if it was a straight-identified man who molested a child. Child abuse is child abuse, period. This is what we’ve been trying to explain to the Vatican!
Another piece of the puzzle that caught my eye was an incident when Lively was still just a wee, new hater in Oregon, cutting his teeth with the “Oregon Citizens Alliance”:
Lively quickly gained a reputation for being a loose canon. In October 1991, the photographer Catherine Stauffer attended a church meeting where the OCA was previewing a videotape it had cobbled together in preparation for a campaign in support of a series of local antigay ballot measures across the state. Lively ejected Stauffer from the meeting forcefully, by throwing her against the wall and dragging her across the floor.[x] She sued Lively and OCA. The jury determined that Lively was guilty of using unreasonable force and awarded Stauffer $20,000.[xi]
Awful story, but I can’t say that I’m surprised. It’s just something in his eyes, I think.
It was apparently not long after that that Lively started losing battles at the ballot box, and perhaps sensing that the culture was beginning a long shift toward acceptance for LGBT peple, he created his greatest lie of all — that gays had created the Nazi party. Here was, perhaps, the first time he said it publicly, on television in Oregon:
Homosexuals created the Nazi Party, and everything that we think about when we think about Nazis actually comes from the minds and perverted ideas of homosexuals. When you think of the Nazi Party… you cannot help but understand that this organization was a machine constructed by militant, sadomasochistic, pedophilic homosexuals. … They built the Nazi machine. They were the people that ran it, and that put it together. Most people understand that there were some homosexuals involved in the Nazi Party—no, it wasn’t that. They were the foundation of the Nazi Party.
And thus his career was born, I suppose. There is so much more in the piece, and Jim is to be commended for taking the time to put it all together. It’s quite a disturbing mosaic, so read it all when you have time.
[Warning: This piece is completely freaking long. I have tried to make it enjoyable. If you don't like that, read something different.]
I have been arguing with myself over whether to post on this screed by someone called “Jim O’Neill,” because to do so could be very time consuming. First of all it is so long-winded that to address its points could take the entire day. Even simply mocking the piece, paragraph by paragraph, could take an hour. What we have here is a guy who seems to have gone quite far off his rocker, who believes that obscure, fringe sources and unhinged hatemongers like NARTH and Scott Lively, who are rejected by the entire scientific and mental health communities, are somehow the only ones telling him the truth, and who truly thinks he has found a nugget of an idea in stating that the “homosexual agenda” is actually the same as the “Islamist agenda,” because both [he says] are misogynistic! Uh, yeah. All you lesbians? You hate women. So much. And all you gay men who shout “divaaaaaa!” at the ceiling any time a woman does something “fierce,” are also he-man woman haters. Also, apparently liberals don’t care about female genital mutilation in the Islamic world. Actually, I learned all about that issue from liberal sources. Anyway, but first, before we enter the biggest vortex of stupid I’ve ever encountered [and this is in a world that contains Peter LaBarbera], let’s look at his bio, because it’s funny:
Born in June of 1951 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Jim O’Neill (constitutionalwrites.com) proudly served in the U.S. Navy from 1970-1974 in both UDT-21 (Underwater Demolition Team) and SEAL Team Two. A member of MENSA, he worked as a commercial diver in the waters off Scotland, India, and the United States. In 1998 while attending the University of South Florida as a journalism student, O’Neill won “First Place” in the “Carol Burnett/University of Hawaii AEJMC Research in Journalism Ethics Award.” The annual contest was set up by Carol Burnett with the money she won from successfully suing the National Enquirer for libel.
He is in MENSA, you guys! You know, I have had the opportunity to join MENSA, and have never done so, mostly because I don’t care, but even if I did, you would NEVER see my “MENSA membership” in my bio. I mean, my goodness. But also, he was a Navy SEAL! Now, as we all know, Navy SEALs are trained to be bad-ass and do things like shoot Osama bin Laden in the face, but this does not tell us anything about their perceptive capabilities when it comes to subjects like homosexuality, now does it? Indeed, there are gay Navy SEALs! This would freak Jim O’Neill out, a lot, as you will see.
Also, your fancy pants college journalism award is named after a campy gay icon, so there is that.
Anyway, let’s jump into the vortex of stupid, but we’ll try not to stay too long. The supposed thesis of this word salad is that gays should not be able to serve in the military:
The goal of a reporter should be to tell a story as accurately as possible and paint a realistic portrait. Facts should be vigorously checked and follow-up questions asked. Unfortunately, the Oprah Winfrey Network’s Our America with Lisa Ling produced an indulgent puff-piece on “ex-gay” programs, “Pray the Gay Away”, that included gross factual inaccuracies resulting from a lack of research and lazy reporting.
Some of Ling’s mistakes were prosaic, yet annoying, such as using the term “gay lifestyle”, even though the 1980’s have been over for quite some time. I’m surprised she didn’t regress even further and refer to gay people as “inverts”. Ling’s excuse was that she was trying to make the “ex-gay” activists comfortable by speaking their lifestyle lingo.
I’m curious if she would extend the same courtesy to a white supremacist group while they politely discussed other minorities in a pejorative way? Furthermore, even if the phrase was uttered within a conversation, it should never have made it out of the editing booth. The fact that Ling and her assistants did not pick up on the obnoxious “lifestyle” phrase and leave it on the cutting room floor suggests a surprising cluelessness.
However, it was not the style (or lifestyle) of the report that was so upsetting, but the lack of substance. Ling shamefully allowed herself to be used by Exodus International, an extreme “ex-gay” group that desperately wanted an image makeover after being tied to the deadly Anti-Homosexuality Bill in Uganda. Sadly, Ling never brought up that Exodus board member Don Schmierer joined a Holocaust revisionist at a conference in Kampala to drop what was called “a nuclear bomb on the gay agenda.”
The enterprising reporter also omitted any reference to spiritual warfare – commonly known as the exorcism – that is a major part of “ex-gay” programs. Exodus President Alan Chambers has said, “One of the many evils this world has to offer is the sin of homosexuality. Satan, the enemy, is using people to further his agenda to destroy the Kingdom of God and as many souls as he can.”
Why did Ling conveniently overlook such disturbing views? Couldn’t she at least have asked Chambers why many of his inflammatory statements in support of spiritual warfare were at odds with the milquetoast image Exodus was peddling in the mainstream media?
Ling was completely uninterested in Exodus’ nefarious lobbying efforts, including the group’s work to pass Proposition 8 in California and enthusiastic support of the Federal Marriage Amendment, which would ban marriage equality in the United States constitution. Could Ling not have taken a moment to explain how Exodus vigorously opposed federal hate crime legislation, was in favor of sodomy laws, and is still fighting against all efforts to protect students from bullying in schools?
No, it was more important for Ling to humanize a group of activists dedicated to dehumanizing LGBT people than to state the plain facts. Better to produce a tearjerker for Oprah than shine a spotlight on the anti-gay jerks causing tears for their victims.
It was also perplexing that Ling failed to include psychological experts to point out that such programs are rejected by every mainstream medical and mental health organization in America. During a live discussion of the topic directly following the show, a psychologist was featured. But, as soon as she told the truth about Exodus and said it was based on “quack therapy” they ushered her off the air. I guess expert opinion wasn’t as good for ratings as helping Exodus peddle its fairytale.
Speaking of fairytales, Chambers audaciously portrayed his marriage as true bliss and told Ling, “It (sex with his wife) felt natural, absolutely, and has every day for our entire marriage.”
What? You’ve got to be kidding me.
Chambers admitted that it took 9 months to consummate his marriage and said at a 2007 Love Won Out conference in Phoenix that to remain “ex-gay” he must “deny what comes naturally to me.”
Why didn’t Ling ask Chambers, “If your experience with your wife was so natural, then why are you saying that you deny what comes naturally to you?” Needless to say, Chambers was ecstatic with the false portrayal of his organization and his marriage.
“I would like to extend my thanks to Lisa Ling for the courtesy, sensitivity and respect she demonstrated during our interviews and the filming at our 35th annual conference,” wrote Chambers on Exodus’ blog.
Ex-gay therapy is a scam that exploits desperate and vulnerable people. Instead of an infomercial for Exodus, the focus of Ling’s piece should have been on the harm the group causes its victims. The Oprah Winfrey Network should take Ling’s embarrassing segment off its website and not re-air it until factual inaccuracies are corrected.
Any chance there is a program to pray away lousy journalism?
Some of Ling’s mistakes were prosaic, yet annoying, such as using 
