crossposted on Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters

scott lively Apparently we lgbts in the United States and Europe are to blame for the harsh anti-gay laws they are trying to pushing in Uganda.

At least that's the case according to anti-lgbt activist Scott Lively.

An article with the right-wing LifesiteNews.com said the following:

While a proposed and much-criticized anti-homosexuality law in Uganda is definitely too harsh, the law comes as a direct response to the heavy-handed pressure from international gay-activist politicians on Uganda to accept homosexuality as normal, according to one Christian expert who was recently in the African country to testify against the current wording of the bill. In fact, as Dr. Scott Lively, the President of Defend the Family pointed out, the preamble to the bill, and the bill itself contain numerous references to stopping international pressure on Uganda to accept Western sexual values that are abhorrent to Ugandan culture.

. . . Dr. Lively, a pro-family activist and attorney based in California was in Uganda in March to testify before Ugandan legislators now considering the legislation. In an interview with LifeSiteNews (LSN), Dr. Lively explained that the impetus for the bill was “a lot of external interference from European and American gay activists attempting to do in Uganda what they've done around the world – homosexualize that society.” One of their main concerns, explained Lively, “are the many male homosexuals coming in to the country and abusing boys who are on the streets.”

Of course Lively provides no evidence of his charges, especially the claim about gays coming into Uganda to rape street children. And I still can't shake my shock at the implications of his statements.

So we are to blame because we are “forcing” people  to “accept homosexuality.”Why am I reminded of the scene in the motion picture Mississippi Burning where the judge gives a light sentence to the men who attacked a black church because, in his opinion, they were “provoked by outside agitators.”

According to Box Turtle Bulletin, while Lively complains that the legislation “goes too far,” he shares some responsibility for it in the first place:
  
Lively was also, along with Exodus International board member Don Schmierer and Caleb Lee Brundidge of Richard Cohen’s International Healing Foundation, one of the three American speakers at the conference in February which led to the current proposed legislation in Uganda.

I would be remiss to not point out that this is the same Scott Lively who was one of the speakers at that comically pathetic rally two weeks ago where various ignorant entities complained that the new hate crimes legislation would lead to pastors being jailed for preaching against homosexuality; a notion completely disingenuous in Lively's case because according to the LifeSiteNews.com article, he actually supports laws against the lgbt community in general:

He testified to lawmakers in the Ugandan Assembly Hall that having legislation against homosexuality on the books is important since it protects against those who would advocate in public and in schools that homosexuality is positive.

I should mention a few other things about Lively.

He runs Abiding Truth Ministries which is considered as an anti-gay hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Lively is also is connected to two more of the 11 organizations considered to be anti-gay hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center. And these groups do not have that designation simply because they oppose homosexuality. They have the designation because they are organizations that go beyond mere disagreement with homosexuality by subjecting gays and lesbians to campaigns of personal vilification.

Lively is the same man who wrote the discredited book, The Pink Swastika, which inaccurately connected lgbts to the Nazi Party in Germany and the Holocaust.

And he is the same man who tried to sanitize the reputation of discredited researcher Paul Cameron. Cameron, amongst other things, published junk science which incorrectly connected homosexuality and pedophilia.

No one should be surprised about that last point. According to Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center, Cameron and Lively are two of a kind:

We see Lively the same way we see Paul Cameron; the two of them in our view consciously promote easily provable false defamations. They don’t seem to care at all what the truth is.”

And unfortunately, as we can see in Uganda, the lies that both tell are having lots of influence.

Related posts:

Catholic News Source: blame foreign gays for Uganda’s “Kill Gays” bill

Anti-Gay Propaganda

Postcards From the Edge: Crackpot Anti-Gay Crusader Goes Global

The Anti-Gay Highway: New Report Details Mutually Beneficial Relationship Between US Evangelicals and African Antigay Clergy  

Scott Lively tries to sanitize Paul Cameron

Religious right anti-hate crimes rally featured person from actual hate group

Why does Miss California's church feel that homosexuality and pedophilia are linked?