Scott Lively: Hey SPLC, Take Me OFF Your Hate, I Mean Hit List!

Says leftists’ “paranoid rhetoric” has “created a monster”…

This large paver brick with threatening hate-message, “Shut Down Lively,” was thrown through the glass doors of the Arlington Heights, IL-based Christian Liberty Academy, in the early morning of October 15, 2011, the day that the school was scheduled to host an AFTAH banquet honoring Scott Lively. Click on photo to enlarge.

The following open letter by our friend Scott Lively was first published August 19, 2012 as a DefendTheFamily.com Alert. I have worked with Scott for decades. Like few others in the world, Lively has experienced the wrath, lies and outright viciousness of the pro-homosexual lobby (which includes fanatically pro-“gay” straights) — yet he has never backed away from biblical truth on this issue. For that reason, AFTAH presented Scott with its 2011 American Truth Teller Award. And as he describes below, because of that we were greeted with our own “domestic terrorism” in the form of two paver bricks thrown through the glass doors of the Christian Liberty Academy (see photo at right), coupled with a threatening manifesto published on a left-wing Chicago website.

There is no reasoning with the radically pro-homosexual, leftist ideologues running Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), who have included AFTAH on their spurious “hate group” list [see our listing among lllinois groups on their “Hate Map.”] But their manipulative “hate” gambit, enabled by the liberal media, is finally being questioned by voices outside the pro-family movement. With last week’s shooting by a “gay” activist at FRC, following the massive outpouring of support for Chick-fil-A, the public is seeing homosexual intolerance and hate in action — and seeing through the pro-LGBT Left’s crass propaganda of portraying civil opponents as “haters,” “bigots,” and “homophobes.” — Peter LaBarbera, AFTAH

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Hey SPLC, Take Me OFF Your Hate, I Mean Hit List!

by Pastor Scott Lively

Scott Lively

This is an open letter to the Southern Poverty Law Center demanding that you CEASE and DESIST labeling me as a “hater,” and viciously lying about me on your website and through your other communications to third parties.

Ever since you put me on your hate list I have been under rhetorical attack from every leftist nut job and “progressive” journalist in America. In 2011 that campaign escalated to terroristic threats backed by vandalism when incensed leftists tried to stop my appearance at Christian Liberty Academy near Chicago to receive the 2011 Truth Teller Award from Americans for Truth About Homosexuality. The night before my speech about the biblical view of homosexuality they smashed out a glass door with a chunk of pavement emblazoned with the demand “SHUT DOWN LIVELY” and then posted a warning on the Internet (a la Al Queda) of more violence to come if the church refused to comply. The local Arlington Heights police department, no doubt influenced by your nationwide “educational” efforts encouraging law enforcement to define only conservatives as “hate groups,” refused to define this attack as a “hate crime.” (See americansfortruth.com/2011/10/15/breaking-brick-throwing-vandals-attack-aftah-banquet-host-christian-liberty-academy/)

In 2012 your Communist fellow-travelers at the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) filed a ridiculously frivolous federal lawsuit against me for “Crimes Against Humanity,” as if I were Adolf Hitler, claiming that my preaching against homosexuality in Uganda led to the murder of Ugandan “gay” leader David Kato. Prominent in the Complaint is your “certification” of me as a hate group and a repetition of the charge you leveled against me in your Summer 2011 “Intelligence Report” Issue # 142 under the title “Murder of Ugandan Again Focuses Spotlight on U.S. Gay-Bashers — Temporarily” stating:

“David Kato Kisule, the leading gay-rights activist in what may be the world’s most virulently anti-gay nation, Uganda, was beaten to death with a hammer in his home outside Kampala on Jan. 26. The murder happened just three months after a local magazine, Rolling Stone, published the names of 100 “homos” under the banner “Hang Them!” — with Kato’s photo prominently displayed on the front page. Scornful attention immediately turned to the contingent of American anti-gay religious crusaders led by Scott Lively, who made a widely criticized visit to Uganda in March 2009 to stir up support for a proposed law that would impose the death penalty or life in prison for certain homosexual acts.”

You published these lies (and CCR submitted them to a federal judge) with full knowledge that the actual killer of David Kato was not some enraged “homophobe” but a male prostitute whom Kato had bailed out of jail to be his live-in lover and houseboy. He confessed to bashing in Kato’s skull with a hammer after Kato refused to pay him for his perverted “services” and is now serving 30 years in a Ugandan prison. (See www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5ihVH6Ahnbnhdo3CqrEDT3mCBknKg?docId=CNG.9057dbf4f3db02f92ea39216b26eb623.8a1 and www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/10/sidney-nsubuga-enoch-david-kato-killer-sentenced-_n_1086379.html)

You also knew that in my address to the Ugandan Parliament I advocated not punishment for homosexuals, and certainly not the death penalty, but voluntary therapy and prevention through healthy marriage and family preparation in the national school system. (See www.defendthefamily.com/pfrc/archives.php?id=2345952 and www.defendthefamily.com/pfrc/newsarchives.php?id=3261726).

What is the real purpose of your shameless dishonesty about me and others on your “hate“ list? It is to provoke hostility and violence against people of Biblical faith to intimidate us into silence about the homosexual political agenda (while at the same time generating huge revenue for yourselves from the thousands who have fallen sway to your cynical fear-mongering). Now we have seen your efforts come nearly to full fruition in the attempted mass murder of the staff of the Family Research Council. Thank God an alert security officer was able to stop your Frankenstein monster from completing his mission.

I warned you that something like this would happen in a letter I sent to you on November 1, 2007:

“When a respected organization such as yours ventures into the business of evaluating the behavior and motives of others (called ‘judging’ when Christians do it), the organization bears a special responsibility to be accurate and fair-minded. An erroneous representation of a person or a group as ‘hateful’ can destroy a reputation and cause great harm. Indeed, given the current extreme Left/Right polarization of our society, identifying someone as ‘hateful,’ in the manner in which your organization uses the term, exposes that person to potential violence at the hands of people who perceive themselves, or other members of their group, as potential victims of his or her ‘hate.’ Such people, relying on your characterization, may feel justified in striking preemptively against the ‘hater.’

“I believe this is similar to the logic that you use in suggesting that public disapproval of homosexuality leads to violence against homosexuals. However, Christian disapproval, if it is legitimately rooted in the teachings of Jesus, forbids violence and in fact requires Christians to ‘love their enemies.’ This is a doctrine I cite continually, though I have never seen the corollary on the Left.”

I repeated my admonition and added a request to be removed from your ’hate’ list in a letter I sent to you a year later on October 18. 2008:

“With inflammatory ‘hate crime’ rhetoric and legislation advancing across the nation, and your organization being perceived by many to be the leading ‘independent’ source of information about so-called anti-‘gay’ hate groups, your refusal to remove my organization from your list of these groups is exposing my organization and me personally to increasing harm. So far, to my knowledge, we have suffered only damage to our reputations. I want to be removed from this list before we suffer something more serious” (See My Letters to SPLC at www.scottlively.net).

Of course you not only did not remove me from your list but escalated your attacks against me. These attacks go back to at least 2005 when you made the false accusation that my book The Pink Swastika: Homosexuality in the Nazi Party (co-authored with Orthodox Jewish researcher Kevin Abrams) “claims gays weren’t victimized in the Holocaust, but instead helped mastermind the extermination of Jews.” This is just another outrageous lie. As you well know, Chapter 5 of The Pink Swastika is titled “The Persecution of Homosexuals” and expounds on the theme (as stated in paragraph two) that “many homosexuals were persecuted and some did die in Nazi work camps.” And you will recall that in response to my letter of November 1, 2007 you agreed to retract the lie that The Pink Swastika blames the Holocaust on homosexuals after I pointed out our statement in the book that “we cannot say that homosexuals caused the Holocaust.” Apparently you lied about the retraction as well, which I learned only today in searching your website.

In that same 2005 attack you also cite support for The Pink Swastika as a reason why FRC is on your hit list: “Repudiated by credible historians, the book is nevertheless praised by the Family Research Council and sold by several anti-gay organizations.”  (As to the “credibility” issue I will remind you that I have held out a standing offer for 17 years to formally debate any qualified critic of The Pink Swastika in any neutral public venue at any time — with nary a single taker from your side). (See www.defendthefamily.com/pfrc/books/pinkswastika/).

Until the attack on FRC I had always operated under the belief that the “bark” of homosexualist activists was worse than their “bite.” Since the success of their movement depends upon a unified public relations strategy which obscures their true agenda and practices, they seemed acutely aware of the public relations disaster they would face if their people started crossing the line from intimidation and dirty tricks into physical violence. Now, however, it seems that increasingly paranoid rhetoric from your organization, and those which follow your lead, have created a monster that has now crossed that line. And your response of justifying yourself instead of softening your tone makes it likely that there will be more of these monsters in the future.

Fortunately for Tony Perkins and his staff at FRC they have a big budget and ability to hire more security for protection. But what about people like me? Not only have you painted a bigger target on my back than on FRC’s, but I have a very small budget and no way to protect myself from any crazy person inspired to harm me because of your dangerous calumny against me.

Am I exaggerating the threat? Following is a recent email I received from one of your ideological allies. Someone identifying himself as “Michael livelykiller@yahoo.com via … Jun 20 to me.,“ using the subject line “your approaching death,” said

“Your time is coming soon,you filthy facsist sh*t.First we will f*ck you with a broomstick until you begin to hemmorrhage.” [*editing mine.]

I have received hundreds of similar messages. While most do not go so far as to threaten murder, they sometimes do cite your organization as authority for the writer’s condemnation of me as a person. Importantly, your highly personalized attacks deliberately pointing to me as a target of anger and hatred can not in any way be compared to my own comments about homosexuality as a form of behavior, or about the homosexual movement as a political institution.

But that’s because you are following your Communist mentor Saul Alinsky who taught you all in Rules for Radicals to “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions. (This is cruel, but very effective. Direct, personalized criticism and ridicule works.)”

You have indeed acted in a cruel, reprehensible and terribly irresponsible manner in lumping me and other Bible-believing Christians with Nazis and KKKers. And of course it is now becoming obvious to all fair-minded observers that you did it in large part to open a new income stream for your perpetual fundraising campaigns. But we Christians are not like Nazis, either in our beliefs nor in the sense of being a tiny irrational fringe that fears scrutiny. We are still the majority in this country, or at least its most sizable plurality. We also have the courage of our convictions and a long, long history of standing up to bullies like yourselves at any cost.

You will not intimidate me into silence. You cannot sue me into retreat from biblical truth. You cannot make me go into hiding by sending — directly or indirectly — armed killers against my allies or myself. I am not afraid to die for the cause of Christ. But neither, given what has occurred against FRC this week, am I going to volunteer for martyrdom by continuing to be passive in the face of your aggressive and inflammatory defamation.

Therefore, given all of these facts, I must repeat my request to be removed from your list of hate groups, and indeed, for the safety of myself and my family I must now insist that you do this immediately.

Pastor Scott Lively
Defend the Family International