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Anti-LGBT Zealot Scott Lively Claims Credit for Inspiring Russia’s Laws

By David Neiwert on September 19, 2013 - 2:36 pm, Posted in Anti-LGBT, Extremist Propaganda
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Anti-LGBT activist Scott Lively is known both for his bizarre theories – notably his long-running thesis that gays were responsible for the Holocaust – and for his ability to stir up anti-gay sentiment abroad, particularly in places like Uganda, for which he eagerly claims credit.

His latest claims and theories fit the pattern: Lively now claims that he inspired Russian President Vladimir Putin – whom he warmly describes as “the only world leader capable of standing up to the West … championing the traditional marriage and Christian values” – to sign a ban on “homosexual propaganda” into law. Oh, and by the way, President Obama seems also to probably be the Antichrist.

NBC News’ Tony Dokoupil interviewed Lively recently, and Lively repeated his previous claim that he inspired the spate of anti-LGBT legislation that has been enacted in Russia in recent years. “Yes, I think I influenced the Russian law,” Lively said.

The NBC report noted that there is some substance to the claim. Boris Dittricht, the chief LGBT advocate for Human Rights Watch, notes that there was no shortage of homophobia in Russian culture before Lively arrived, but observed that “the American pastor appears to have given shape to that free-floating hatred.” Dittrich noted that public bans on homosexual propaganda followed shortly after Lively would pass through those regions, preaching and promoting just such a solution by meeting with politicians and appearing with them in public. Before Putin made it a national standard, more than a half-dozen jurisdictions had passed such bans.

The NBC report includes video of Lively while touring Russia and using some of the eliminationist rhetoric he typically deploys. “There is a war that is going on in the world,” Lively is seen telling a Novosibirsk crowd through a translator. “There is a war that is waging across the entire face of the globe. It’s been waging in the United States for decades, and it’s been waging in Europe for decades. It’s a war between Christians and homosexuals.”

On his own website, Lively responded with dismay to the NBC report, claiming that “this isn’t journalism. It is leftist political spin.”

“My major beef with Tony and all of the ‘progressive’ journalists who dominate the mainstream media is that their ‘news’ stories always reflect the ‘gay’ perspective of what is still a two-sided argument,” Lively wrote. He concluded that “the first loyalty of progressive journalists is to their ideology, not to truth.”

Lively also soft-pedaled the surge of anti-gay violence that has accompanied Putin’s campaign, including videos that portray neo-Nazis kidnapping and torturing young gay man. Much of the violence has been committed by openly fascist skinhead factions, as Russia’s neo-Nazi movement has swelled in numbers at the same time.

Lively shrugs it off: “And the Russian incident appears to me to be another case of gay on gay crime, but even if it isn’t, it’s just random crime completely unrelated to and unjustified by the new Russian law.”

Meanwhile, Lively earlier this week appeared on the evangelical End Times radio show TruNews with host Rick Wiles and explained that the Apocalypse was at hand because of the alignment of current events. And he made clear, without naming him, that President Obama himself is the Antichrist, and that he is secretly colluding with satanic gays to bring about the end of the world:

Lively began his anti-gay career in Oregon in the 1990s, leading the charge of the right-wing Oregon Citizens Alliance as it sponsored a seemingly endless array of anti-LGBT initiatives, including a 1992 ballot measure that would have prohibited all authorities in the state from trying to “promote, encourage or facilitate homosexuality, pedophilia, sadism or masochism.” He rose to stardom among some right-wing evangelicals for his 1995 book The Pink Swastika: Homosexuality in the Nazi Party, which contended that it was actually a secret faction of gay Nazis who engineered the Holocaust.

His virulently anti-LGBT organization, Watchmen on the Walls, has been noted for forming alliances with far-right evangelicals in Eastern Europe and Africa.

18 Comments
  • Erika

    ijoij, no historically most repression of sexuality and sexual practices has been primarily and indeed at times exclusively aimed at women. Even today the homophobes tend to be mysognists who seek to control female sexuality – the same people backing laws making being gay illegal also tend to back laws prohibiting birth control,. And in general they seek to ban all sex other than sex for the purpose of reproduction.

    Of course, seeking to repress everyone is really a reversal from the sitaution which prevailed from Biblical times to well into the 20th Century – where almost all sexual practice by women and all sexual practice by gays was prohibited by law – however, prostitution was either de jure and de facto legal. In fact, the same Old Testament that the homephobes love to cite to comdemn homosexuality has a rather “interesting” view of prostitution (especially the verses that indicate that there were both male and female prostitutes). In fact, i think tha tthe conclusion that Old Testament sexual morality only applied to women and really secondary to gays (i’m pretty sure that the male prostitutes mentionde in the Bible were not serving women) – and today the religious right people who seek to impose it really have the same goal. Their real primary goal is to control women sexually – the gay men are secondary – i mean, the Bible doesn’t specifically condemn all male homosexuality (see the male prostitutes) – or many instances where men have sex with women outside of marriage. But the Old Testament most definitely does condemn all women who engage in sex outside of marriage.

    Oddly despite the right wing goal, stastically right wing areas tend to be very large consumers of “adult entertainemnt” much of which contains “lesbian” themes. So perhaps their total sexual repression isn’t working out so well.

    And its also kind of odd that despite the fact that The Old Testament they love so much is much more condemning of women who engage in sex outside of marriage that all of these religious right types (in this country at least – in other countries the local religious right do things like stone to death rape victims and Americans who apparently don’t ever bother to read their Bibles are aghast at where they would get such a horrific idea) are much more focused on condemning female sexuality. But not here.

    Now why it that? The source they claim to use for their views is much more unambigious in condemning women who engage in sex for a purpose other than having babies. Yet these guys are obsessed with gay sex and often seem to ignore not only lesbian sex but hetereosexual sex as well. why it that???

    my theory remains that they simply find girls to be icky.

  • ijoij

    As for why they’re less concerned with female homosexuality it’s because most modern Western homophobia viewed male homosexuality as “degradation of women” and the logical conclusion of misogyny (the example of ancient greece was often invoked). This was backed by psychology, sexology, and in particular the sociologists and philosophers of the political left. Women homosexuals were patronized as deluded people who didn’t know any better. And of course male homosexuals being the bigger threat to babymaking and the family unit that the economy required was a no brainer (women were less likely to be financially independent and socially accepted as bachelors).

  • ijoij

    The irony of all of you saying that gay bashers are “secret homosexuals” is that you’re literally repeating what homophobes like Scott Lively say. Hence him calling fascist attacks on gays “gay on gay crime.” Of course no true heterosexual would do such a thing, its those innately dysfunctional gays.

  • Kiwiwriter

    Many of the gay-bashers are not too concerned about lesbian sex…they’re really obsessed with male gay sex, from what I have seen over the years.

    I have said earlier that I am convinced that a great deal of the male gay-bashers are deeply-closeted gays trying to deflect attention from their own lives, deny their own behaviors, or to “kill” the “beast” that lurks within them.

    At the same time, I think there is a fascination by heterosexual women with lesbian women as them being the “experts” on “how to please a woman.” They know the answer to the “great mystery.”

    A lot of men also have the idea that all lesbian women need to become straight is to “make it” with a “real man.” It’s part of the male game of conquest and bragging.

    As I often joke, men have three and exactly three reactions to hearing that a woman is a lesbian:

    1. “That’s disgusting!”
    2. “Can I watch?”
    3. Both of the above.

    But I do agree that the anti-gay movement seems more furious about gay men than gay women. Queen Victoria refused to sign the portion of Britain’s anti-homosexuality bill on the grounds until the line about lesbianism was removed, saying that it didn’t exist. The line was struck out.

    Adolf Hitler also tartly observed in one of his many monologues that while it was possible to impregnate gay women, gay men could never reproduce, so gay women were no threat to the expansion of the Aryan race, while male homosexuality could doom it.

  • Erika

    The most interesting part of their proposed law is that it only bans homosexual orgies and therefore apparently would allow heterosexual orgies to take place in public streets, parks, and facilities.

    and i kind of get the impression that these people are not at all really concerned about lesbian sex – i think that hewhoshallnotbenamed’s comments about his sexual “education” at the Pink Pussycat Theatre are instructive in that area which reveals that their biggest issue may well be that deep down they think that girls are icky.

  • aadila

    Rey,

    I have a friend who was active in Jackson and other scary places like Natchez in ’64 who brought some books for the Freedom Schools and hoping to register black voters with the COFO. He couldn’t sleep in public parks because both police and klan were making more or less constant threats when it was clear what he was doing, so instead he slept in graveyards. It felt safer there than trying to walk anywhere alone at night.

  • concernedcitizen

    As though it isn’t enough that we give free forum to knuckleheads all over America to spew lies and revisionist history, but the fact that they take their side show clown acts on the road and promote hate amongst other countries is enough to make you ask…

    Where is airport security when these idiots are checking in?

  • Reynardine

    Damn, I lived through the Sixties and the Seventies and I never saw public parks used for anything more exciting than softball.

  • Reynardine

    Toni, I am not that, but have an eclectic acquaintance with the taxonomy and cultivation of the nut grove.

  • Aron

    There are public streets, parks, and facilities that are used for orgies? Boy, I sure am missing out!

  • Reynardine

    God bless Pruritans, always with their noses in other people’s crotches to see what they can sniff out.

  • Kiwiwriter

    “Victor said,

    on September 19th, 2013 at 10:43 pm

    Does anyone else think that he’s WAY to preoccupied with gay sex? Methinks he doth protest too much. Another self-hating closet case obviously.”

    I am absolutely convinced that the loudest gay-bashers are deeply closeted gays, who are putting on the gay-hating show, either to drive attention away from their own hobby, or to somehow “kill” the urges they feel in themselves. Note their attitudes towards women is often to treat them as “property.”

    Their real enemy stands in the mirror.

  • Victor

    Does anyone else think that he’s WAY to preoccupied with gay sex? Methinks he doth protest too much. Another self-hating closet case obviously.

  • Jerry Sloan

    It is my belief that Scott Lively has gotten many of his ideas about legally discriminating against GLBT persons as outlined in a “Model Sexuality Bill” as proposed in 1983 by the infamous and discredited researcher Paul Cameron. This “proposed” law was picked up by the late Paul Weyrich and promoted by his Free Congress Foundation,. In part the law proposed:

    1) no institution receiving tax monies may hire any person known to practice homosexual acts; any administrator who violates this provision shall be dismissed.

    2) the public airways, satellites, and publicly regulated utilities may not be used to advertise, solicit, or depict homosexual acts.

    3) any public employee convicted of a homosexual act must be discharged.

    4) any licensed professional convicted of a homosexual act must forfeit his license, and under go suitable rehabilitation before reapplying for licensure.

    5) no institution receiving tax monies may promote advertise for, or campaign for homosexual activity. No institution receiving tax monies may permit a homosexual club, gathering, dance, or other public activity to occur on its premises. Any administrator that violates this provision shall be dismissed.

    6) no public street, park or facility may be used for a homosexual parade, gathering, demonstration or orgy.

    The bill would also regulate some heterosexual activities, like no unmarried co-habitation, stronger penalties for prostitution and rape.

  • toni aguilar

    I think it would be very interesting if SPLC had on staff a psychologist or psychiatrist well-versed in abnormal psychology, psychopathy, and sociopathy and who would give readers of hate watch (and other media) ersatz analyses of these nuts like lively and phelps….and their brethren.

  • http://www.slowlyboiledfrog.com David Cary Hart

    Lively is, in my opinion, responsible for the anti-gay laws in St. Petersburg.For the country as a whole? I doubt it.

    I wrote something today about my struggle with PTSD. I am relatively nuts. So when I call Lively crazy, know that it is from a unique perspective. The problem is that other people listen to Lively.

    I am hoping that SMUG will have success. There is an international precedent with Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines, or Hutu Power Radio. At least two managers are doing 30 years in prison for conduct that I find quite similar to Lively.

  • Reynardine

    From the mouth issues evil- the I Ching.

  • Kiwiwriter

    Well, we all know that success has a thousand fathers, and defeat is a lonely orphan, and I guess Scott is modestly taking credit for something he had little to do with.

    That’s pretty funny about the Nazis being a gay movement. It is true that gays were in force in the early days of the Nazi Party — Ernst Rohm, head of the SA Brownshirts, was notorious and open about his bedroom playmates, and Hitler remarked in the 1920s that he didn’t care about Rohm’s behavior, noting that gay brownshirts were not likely to rape women or have non-Aryan children.

    However, when the Nazis took power in 1933, Hitler had no need for revolutionaries (now that the revolution was complete), and wanted to be rid of the obnoxious and noisy Rohm, a former Army captain who demanded to that he and his Brownshirts replace the German Army. Rohm claimed to be a “second Gneisenau.”

    However, the real heirs to Gneisenau, the Reichswehr’s generalitat, shuddered at the idea of a noisy pederast and his street-brawling thugs replacing their army, and said so to Hitler. Der Fuehrer was a classic liar and a conniving politician, and he didn’t have much use for Rohm, the Brownshirts…or gays, for that matter, despite his earlier rhetoric.

    So he cut a deal with the Army…they would support him in return for cutting off the heads of the SA, and Hitler did so on June 30, 1934, the infamous “Night of the Long Knives,” in which the Nazi leadership, particularly Heinrich Himmler’s SS, arrested and shot most of the SA leaders, as well as numerous other people — family members, political opponents of the Nazis, former Chancellor Schleicher, even a music critic in a case of mistake identity.

    Hitler himself went to a hotel in Bavaria and personally arrested Rohm, finding the SA Stabschef in bed with his boyfriend, along with a bunch of other SA bigshots, all there for a conference.

    When the gunfire was done at the SS barracks in Berlin, the SA was de-fanged and merely an adjunct for parades, beating Jews, and (later) air-raid cleanup, Hitler was the “Supreme Justician of the German People,” and the Nazis were rounding up gays by the bucketload, slapping them into striped uniforms with pink triangles, in concentration camps.

    Revolutions are often fueled by the blood of their makers, somebody famous once said. The Nazis were no different. And after they were done killing their own, they killed everybody else: Slavs, Catholics, union members, Roma, Poles, Frenchmen, Norwegians, Greeks, and eventually Britons, Australians, Canadians, and New Zealanders, to name a few….and Jews…and gays.

    And finally, in the Reich’s last hours…themselves, with Hitler ordering the arrests of Goering and Himmler, and Adolf, Eva, and the Goebbels family blowing themselves away in the bunker.

    There will be a test on this material. See me after class.