Moody Pastor Erwin Lutzer Rejects Call by Marxist Homosexual Group Pressures him to Pull Out of AFTAH Banquet

AFTAH honoree Scott Lively responds to Gay Liberation Network lie that he supports violence against Ugandan homosexuals

“It is the central (but patently false) narrative of the left that all criticism of homosexuality leads inevitably to violence and murder.” – Scott Lively, recipient of AFTAH’s 2011 “American Truth Teller” Award; from his essay, “Murdering Uganda”

“Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of Me.”—Jesus Christ, in Matthew 5:11 (NASB)

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Come out and support Scott, Dr. Lutzer and AFTAH! Please join us this Saturday, Oct. 15th at the AFTAH banquet with Dr. Lutzer (doors open at 6:00 PM at Christian Liberty Academy, 502 W. Euclid Ave., Arlington Heights, IL; tickets $10; $20 at the door). Dr. Lutzer will address the escalating persecution against Christians under pro-homosexuality laws. (Dr. Lively also will give a brief speech as we present him with the 2011 AFTAH “American Truth Teller” award.)

Friday speech by Lively: There is a second opportunity to hear Scott Lively, who will give a speech Friday, Oct. 14 at 7:00 PM at Grace Gospel Fellowship church in Bensenville, IL, (located on Route 83 just north of I-290)  The event is FREE but there will be a freewill offering taken for Americans For Truth – to help us combat homosexual extremism as typified by GLN.  This event will include time for Q & A with Scott.  Thank you for standing with us!

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By Peter LaBarbera

Dear AFTAH Readers,

A Chicago Marxist group, Gay Liberation Network, is pressuring Moody Church Pastor Dr. Erwin Lutzer to pull out as keynote speaker at the Americans For Truth banquet this Saturday because AFTAH is honoring Scott Lively, who GLN falsely claims has a “history as a vicious gay basher.” At the October 15 event, AFTAH will present Lively with its 2011 “American Truth Teller” award for his years of defending truth on the homosexual issue.Scott Lively has been the target of a malicious homosexual campaign of lies claiming he supports violence against homosexuals.”]

Scott Lively has been the target of a malicious homosexual campaign of lies claiming he supports violence against homosexuals.

Lively sent me (and Dr. Lutzer) the following two letters in response to GLN leader Bob Schwartz’s outlandish claims. A verbatim copy of the contents of the GLN letter, sent to Lutzer by certified mail September 27, 2011, follows Scott’s letters below.

In his letter to Lutzer, GLN’s Bob Schwartz writes:

“Are you aware of Lively’s history as a vicious gay basher?…In addition, as you may know, LaBarbera’s organization [AFTAH] and Lively’s Abiding Truth Ministries are both described as ‘hate groups’ by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Are these the kinds of organizations with which you wish to associate the Moody Church? …[W]e take you at your word when you say you oppose violence against gays. We therefore assume that you would not want to be associated with those, like Lively and LaBarbera, who either support violence outright, or honor those who do.”

This is a monstrous lie. From the beginning of my involvement in the homosexuality debate, I – like Scott – have repeatedly and consistently condemned all violence and genuine hatred directed at homosexuals. So when Schwartz and the GLN urged Pastor Lutzer not to “[associate] with those, like Lively and LaBarbera, who either support violence outright, or honor those who do” – they slandered me as well as Scott.

The chutzpah of the Chicago-based GLN and its co-leader, Bob Schwartz, is hard to overstate – for it was Schwartz himself who once made a thinly-veiled threat of violence against this writer as I was standing in opposition to a Chicago “gay youth” event in downtown Chicago (as then-Executive Director of Illinois Family Institute). Schwartz pointed to a few Chicago policemen standing nearby and told me that if it weren’t for the presence of my “friends” (the police), he would push me into oncoming traffic. Since I began writing about the incident, Schwartz has never denied making the nasty remark. Of course, had it been the other way around and I’d made the same violence-tinged threat against a homosexual advocate like Schwartz, there likely would have been “hate crimes” charges filed against me!

From the Gay Liberation Network website: crass anti-Christian bigotry and distortion of biblical truth. Click on graphic to enlarge.

The Gay Liberation Network is one of the most vicious and extreme homosexualist organizations I have ever encountered.  They hatefully smeared Dr. James Dobson’s good name and accused him of “hate speech” when he was inducted into the Chicago-based Museum of Broadcast Communications’ Hall of Fame.  And they blasted Dr. Lutzer as a “hater” simply because he wrote a book against same-sex “marriage.”  (The GLN protesters even disparaged the venerable Moody Church as a “House of Hate”!) Also, see Bob Schwartz’s letter HERE supporting the University of Illinois’ firing of Catholic professor Ken Howell because he taught the Catholic, natural law opposition to homosexual practice (who was later reinstated).

Thus, it is completely in line with GLN’s malicious track record to see them cruelly malign and lie about Scott – a godly and courageous Christian man – as a “vicious gay basher.”  Still, as one who has also been lied about on a regular basis by homosexual militants, it grieves my heart to see this good man portrayed as evil (Isaiah 5:20).

We are grateful to Dr. Lutzer for not giving in to this deceitful and despicable GLN campaign against Lively — who daily models the Christian’s noble calling to speak Gospel truth in love – and who has been mercilessly demonized by the liberal media and LGBT activists for boldly proclaiming the unswerving truth about homosexuality, year in and year out.

Peter LaBarbera
Americans For Truth About Homosexuality
www.aftah.org
E-mail: americansfortruth@gmail.com

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Letter to Dr. Lutzer from Scott Lively Oct. 10, 2011:

Dear Peter [LaBarbera],

As you well know, I am a Bible-believing Christian who abhors violence against anyone, and have never advocated violence or hatred against homosexuals.  You may recall that when we first met in Framingham, MA in 1992, my wife and I and our four young sons had for several months been nursing a former homosexual man with AIDS in our own home.  He lived with us until his death from that horrific disease later that year.  I have worked with dozens of people seeking an exit from that lifestyle over the years, including my own sister (who repented and overcame it), and have worked with men seeking recovery from homosexuality in my inner-city church in Springfield, MA.  The website of my Springfield mission is www.redemptiongate.org.

GLN leader Bob Schwartz once told AFTAH President Peter LaBarbera that he would like to push him into oncoming traffic.

While I am compelled by Christ to love those who struggle with homosexual sin as individuals, I am also strongly opposed to the homosexual political agenda, which I view as an existential threat to Christian civilization around the world.  I have long considered myself a missionary to the global pro-family movement and have ministered in more than two dozen countries as a university lecturer, consultant to government officials and advisor to pastors and Christian leaders.  As you know, I hold a Juris Doctor degree from Trinity Law School, a TH.D. from the Pentecostal Assemblies of God, and a Certificate in Human Rights from the International Institute of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France.

One of the countries in which I have ministered is Uganda.  I was keynote speaker at their first national pro-family conference, sponsored by the Minister of Ethics and Integrity in 2002(?).  My wife and I returned the following year to help the movement develop, and in 2009 I was invited to give a seminar to government officials and other community leaders about the homosexual issue.  They were planning to draft legislation to curb the rapid spread of homosexuality in the country.

The text for my lectures was based entirely on my textbook “Redeeming the Rainbow: A Christian Response to the ‘Gay’ Agenda” which was then in manuscript form but has since been published in print form and in PDF; the latter is downloadable without charge at http://www.defendthefamily.com/rtr/.  I have also attached a copy.  You will not find a single sentence in this book that promotes hatred or violence against homosexuals.

During my 2009 trip I also addressed members of the Ugandan Parliament in their national assembly hall.  My advice to the MPs regarding the law they were contemplating but had not yet drafted was to focus on rehabilitation of homosexuals 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.

In contradiction to my advice, a few months after the seminar an MP introduced a bill to criminalize homosexuality.  The terms of the bill were harsh, as is very common in African countries, including capital punishment for a category of crimes called “aggravated homosexuality.”  That category was aimed at pedophilia and sexual abuse of disabled persons but was inartfully worded so as to potentially also encompass simple homosexuality.

I do not support capital punishment for any sex crimes, let alone simple homosexuality, which I view as a treatable behavioral disorder, and so I opposed the bill.  I was nevertheless accused in the international media of not only endorsing the bill but of advocating for it.  These false accusations were not deterred by my written responses which attempted to set the record straight.  The first was an editorial titled “The Death Penalty in Uganda” and the second was a copy of my letter to the Ugandan Parliament together with its response.  They are published on my website here  http://www.defendthefamily.com/pfrc/newsarchives.php?id=4480922  and here http://www.defendthefamily.com/pfrc/newsarchives.php?id=3261726.

I am no stranger to persecution for my commitment to Biblical truth, and over the twenty plus years I have worked primarily in this ministry I have been maligned and slandered to an extreme degree.  This is a tactic of all leftists but especially of the “gays,” who are the most adept and vicious of all in the use of malicious propaganda, as should be no surprise to any Christian familiar with Romans 1:26-31.

Following the introduction of the Uganda Bill I was personally attacked as the supposed “mastermind” behind it in feature stories in the New York Times, London Guardian, Canadian National Post, ABC News, and PBS, among others.  Later, not once, but twice, when supposed homosexual activists in Uganda were killed, it was implied by the liberal western media that I was responsible.  In both cases the accusations were published before the facts were even known to the police.  In both cases the deaths were later proved to be unrelated to the passions surrounding the Ugandan bill.  The first killing turned out to be the work of pagan witch doctors involved in some bizarre ritual.  The original story is no longer on the Ugandan news site but the following item from a “gay” blog admits their facts were wrong (while casting themselves as victims of a “hoax”):    http://www.religiondispatches.org/dispatches/candacechellew-hodge/2930/hoax_underscores_urgency_for_lgbt_people_in_uganda/.

The second case, involving the grisly murder of Ugandan homosexual activist David Cato, turned out to be a crime of passion by a male prostitute whom Cato had bailed out of jail and taken to be his houseboy:   http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5ihVH6Ahnbnhdo3CqrEDT3mCBknKg?docId=CNG.9057dbf4f3db02f92ea39216b26eb623.8a1

In neither of these cases was an apology written, nor was a correction on the facts made; neither did ANY mainstream media outlet issue a retraction of the false implication that I was somehow involved in these killings.

In the two years since the propaganda campaign against me was launched, I have received hundreds if not thousands of hate mails, including a plausible death threat which led to judicial action by the police.  I have been shunned as a resource by several Christian organizations (and numerous pastors), and my church has been picketed numerous times and a rock thrown through the front window once.  One time a man stuck his head in the door during my sermon to yell “Scott Lively is a murderer.”  I was also attacked on the front page of the Boston Globe in a purely gratuitous “hit piece,” centered on the Ugandan story, designed to discredit my Christian mission in Springfield.

I am fully content to know that those who desire to live Godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution and I have not shrunk, nor will I shrink from standing boldly for the truth of God’s word, come what may.  Neither will I succumb to the urge for revenge or hatred toward those who hate and attack me with such hysteria.  They truly know not what they do.

I must, however, exhort my fellow Christians not to allow themselves to be influenced by the propaganda nor intimidated by the harassment tactics of LGBT activists.  It has always been the case that the cause of Christ is advanced only through selfless courage in the face of determined opposition.  Not even the gates of hell can prevail against us when we abide unshakably in Him.  Even today believers must stand fast to the point of death in some places in the world.  How can we dare to shrink from our challenge when we face merely slander by our foes and shunning by weaker brothers?

Many Blessings,

Scott

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Below is a short, subsequent message from Lively regarding the Gay Liberation Network’s cynical claim that he “justified anti-gay violence” toward Uganda’s most prominent pro-homosexuality activist; we have attached a copy of Scott’s piece, “Murdering Uganda,”

Hi Peter,

My prior message covers all the aspects of this letter except the accusation that I justified violence in Uganda.  Their quote is from my attached essay “Murdering Uganda” which shall serve as a complete rebuttal to their misrepresentation.  Please forward this to Pastor Lutzer along with my prior message to you.

In Jesus,

Scott

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Murdering Uganda

By Pastor Scott Lively, J.D., Th.D.

President, Defend the Family International

www.defendthefamily.com

Uganda is being murdered.  The nation once called “The Pearl of Africa” by Winston Churchill, a lush and beautiful country as fertile as the Nile Delta.  It is the nation that retained its self-rule through centuries of African colonialism, the society that survived even the atrocities of the cannibal cultist Idi Amin, the culture that has been thriving in Christian revival for over a dozen years.

This great and honorable nation, alone in Africa to have all but conquered the scourge of AIDS  through abstinence — and whose First Lady led a holy gathering of thousands of believers on the eve of the millennium, dedicating her homeland “to Jesus Christ for a thousand years” — this Uganda, a shining light in the Dark Continent, is being murdered.

The murderers are the lavender Marxists, the now-global network of sexual revolutionaries bent on remaking the entire world in their own perverted image, whose juggernaut has toppled even once mighty Britain, crushing under their lavender boots after eight centuries the symbol of its Christian power: the Magna Charta, whose first principle had proclaimed, “The English church must be free!”  These revolutionists of Sodom, who march triumphantly through all the major cities of the western world to flaunt their defeat of moral law, and who hold both Hollywood and the heart of America’s president in their iron grip: these very same zealots have fixed their malevolent gaze on Christian Uganda.

Uganda is the only country in the world with a national holiday commemorating its rejection of sexual perversion.  Every June 3 it honors the 22 young men and boys who were tortured and roasted alive in 1886 by homosexual King Mwanga, because they refused to submit to sodomy.   Is it any wonder, then, that Uganda has reacted violently against the army of agitators, led by George Soros, who now seek to re-homosexualize Ugandan culture?

It is as if the militant ranks of “Code Pink” were transported back to 1890s America to agitate for “sexual freedom.”  Our great grandparents would not have countenanced this.  There would have been violence, as there has now been in Uganda.  And that is, of course, the strategy: the agents provocateur are goading unsophisticated natives into over-reacting, while the “gay” media lie in wait to catch the images and spin the propaganda that is even now poisoning the gullible against the Ugandans.

Ugandan homosexual activist David Kato was recently beaten to death with a hammer, a horrific crime.  These very media rushed eagerly to judge this a hate crime and to blame those, like me, who have spoken against homosexuality in Uganda.  It is the central (but patently false) narrative of the left that all criticism of homosexuality leads inevitably to violence and murder. Yet the killer has now been caught and confessed that he was a live-in male prostitute who murdered Kato for failing to pay him as promised.  The “gay” hate-narrative has failed, the Ugandan rejection of “gay” culture has been vindicated, and the finger-pointing media have pulled quietly back into the shadows — for now.

There is indeed evil in Uganda today, but it is not the reaction of Christian and Moslem citizens to the rape of their culture. It is the pink-gloved hand of western powers that are cutting the throat of Africa’s most God-fearing country, and one of the world‘s most promising Christian democracies.

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Gay Liberation Network letter to Dr. Erwin Lutzer, filled with falsehoods against Scott Lively and Peter LaBarbera:
Gay Liberation Network

4404 N. Magnolia, #420, Chicago, IL 60640

LGBTLiberation@aol.com
www.GayLiberation.net
773-209-1187

September 27, 2011

Pastor Erwin Lutzer

The Moody Church

1635 N. LaSalle Street

Chicago, IL 60614

Via certified mail, restricted delivery

Dear Pastor Lutzer:

We in Gay Liberation Network are aware that you are the scheduled main speaker at an October 15 fundraising dinner of Americans for Truth About Homosexuality. Do you know that one Scott Lively is to be honored at that dinner by Peter LaBarbera. Are you aware of Scott Lively’s history as a vicious gay basher?

LaBarbera identifies Lively as a “veteran Christian culture warrior who has been leading the resistance against the homosexualist juggernaut—in the USA and across the world.” LaBarbera says Lively has “suffered greatly for doing good and honoring God and His Truth.”

“Honoring God and His Truth”?

Scott Lively journeyed to Uganda in 2009 with other US evangelical gay bashers to stage a “Seminar on Exposing the Homosexual Agenda” even though homosexuality was already illegal in that nation. Lively helped stoke anti-gay animus by playing the “child molestation” card, asserting that gays are “looking for other people to prey upon, and that went they see someone from a broken home, it’s like they have a flashing neon sign over their head…male homosexuality has not traditionally been adult to adult, it’s men adult to teenager….The gay movement is an evil institution.”

It was following Lively’s “seminar” that legislation was introduced into the Ugandan parliament that would impose the death penalty for so-called aggravated homosexuality.” All gay meetings would be banned under this draconian measure, and heterosexuals could be jailed as well for any advocacy of homosexuality or defense of gay people. Please note that Scott Lively has supported this further criminalizing of homosexuality, even as some evangelicals like Rick Warren have distanced themselves from it. (Lively advised against death sentences for Ugandan gays, since it could result in “public sympathy” for them; he prefers forced “rehabilitation.”)

More recently, Lively justified anti-gay violence when Uganda’s leading gay advocate was murdered. Lively wrote, “It is as if the militant ranks of ‘Code Pink’ were transported back to 1890s America to agitate for ‘sexual freedom.’ Our great grandparents would not have countenanced this. There would have been violence, as there has now been in Uganda [emphasis added by Schwartz]

In addition, as you may know, LaBarbera’s organization [AFTAH] and Lively’s Abiding Truth Ministries are both described as “hate groups” by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Are these the kind of organizations with which you wish to associate the Moody Church?

Although our differences with you are sharp and distinct, due to your opposition to marriage equality for lesbian and gay people, we take you at your word when you say that you oppose violence against gays. We therefore assume that you would not want to be associated with those, like Lively and LaBarbera, who either support violence outright, or honor those who do.

We hope, therefore, you will rethink your decision to appear at LaBarbera’s banquet. Whatever your decision, we will be at the Christian Liberty Academy to protest those who oppose our equal rights, and particularly those who countenance violence against our community or participate in honoring those who do.

Truly yours,

Bob Schwartz

For the Gay Liberation Network

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Biography of Dr. Scott Lively

Dr. Scott Lively is President of Defend the Family International, a United States-based human rights organization which defends family values and religious freedom. An attorney, author and ordained minister, Dr. Lively is a staunch advocate of what he terms “Masculine Christianity,” — a scripturally-rooted doctrine of Christian cultural and political assertiveness.  Dr. Lively is also an internationally recognized expert on the global homosexual movement, which he identifies as a leading threat to Christianity in the modern age.

Education:

Dr. Lively holds the degrees of Juris Doctor, magna cum laude, from Trinity Law School in Santa Ana, California, and Doctor of Theology from the School of Bible Theology Seminary and University in San Jacinto, California.  He also holds a Certificate in Human Rights, from the International Institute of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France.

Published Works:

Redeeming the Rainbow: A Christian Response to the “Gay” Agenda, (2010);

My Life in His Hands: A Testimony of God’s Grace and Goodness (2007);

The Pink Swastika: Homosexuality in the Nazi Party, 4^th Edition (2002), with co-author Kevin E. Abrams;

The Poisoned Stream: “Gay” Influence in Human History (1996);

Seven Steps to Recruit-Proof Your Child (1997);

Why and How to Defeat the “Gay” Movement (2001);

Defeating “Gay” Arguments With Simple Logic (2003);

Balance in the Classroom: A teacher’s guide to explaining the pro-family viewpoint in non-religious terms (2003);

Reprobate Theology: the homosexual seduction of the American Church (2003).

Professional History

Senior Pastor, The Coffee House Church, Springfield, MA, 2010-Present.

Founder and President, Redemption Gate Mission Society, Springfield, MA 2008-Present, www.redemptiongate.org;

Founder and President, Abiding Truth Ministries (parent-organization of Defend The Family International), 1997-Present, www.defendthefamily.com;

Co-Founder and Managing Partner, Lively, Ackerman & Cowles Law Firm, 2003-2006.

Founder and Chairman, The Pro-Family Law Center, 1999-2006.

State Communications Director, Oregon Citizens Alliance, 1989-1997.

Personal History

Raised in a home shattered by the mental illness of his father, Scott Lively became an alcoholic at age 12, a drug addict by 14, was homeless at 16.  After sixteen years in the throes of addiction, several of them as a penniless drifter, Scott was miraculously healed and delivered in prayer in 1986, going on to become a leading Christian social activist and later an attorney and pastor. Scott is married to Anne, and has four grown sons.

You may reach Dr. Lively through his website at www.defendthefamily.com or by writing to Abiding Truth Ministries, PO Box 2373, Springfield MA 01101.