Parts 1 and 2
Hey SPLC, Take Me OFF Your Hate, I Mean Hit List!
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 (ala 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 http://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 http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5ihVH6Ahnbnhdo3CqrEDT3mCBknKg?docId=CNG.9057dbf4f3db02f92ea39216b26eb623.8a1 and http://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 http://www.defendthefamily.com/pfrc/archives.php?id=2345952 and http://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 http://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
Part 2, Hey SPLC, Part II
By Pastor Scott Lively
Lets just get right down to brass tacks about the Southern Poverty Law Center and its campaign against social conservatives. And I’m going to gently correct a few Christian commentators here in the process. The problem with SPLC’s hateful rhetoric about FRC, myself, American Family Association, etc, etc, is NOT that its rhetoric is inflammatory. As SPLC correctly points out in its defense to FRC’s accusation, condemnatory language is often appropriate, as in their example of rebuking Neo-Nazis who declare Jews to be “vermin.” No, the problem with the SPLC is they are shameless and self-serving LIARS!! They are liars whose deliberate false witness against Christian (and now Jewish*) conservatives takes the FORM of inflammatory rhetoric.
If I, for example, were the monster that SPLC has portrayed me to be in its numerous attacks, (e.g. masterminding death penalty legislation for homosexuals in Uganda and ginning up irrational prejudice against them) I would DESERVE the rhetorical condemnation, just as the many homosexual men who have traveled to Uganda as sex tourists to prey on boys (or became priests in the Catholic church to do the same) DESERVE condemnation. But it is a lie that I have accused ALL or even most homosexuals of being child molesters, and I have been consistently clear on that since the start of my ministry. And of course it is a lie that I promoted the death penalty for homosexuals in Uganda.
I have never accused ALL or even most homosexuals of being responsible for the AIDS epidemic, even though year upon year since the beginning of the crisis our own governmental Centers For Disease Control has identified MSM (men who have sex with men) as by far the largest group spreading the disease. (And how do you think all those women sleeping with bisexuals got it?).
Wait for it….Now hear the screams of outrage on the left, the wailing and gnashing of teeth. “See, there he is again spreading hate against homosexuals!!!” But this ISN’T hate. If I truly hated homosexuals, or even AIDS-infected homosexuals, would I have brought “gay” activist AIDS victim Sonny Weaver into my home with my wife and four young sons to care for him during the last year of his life — after he was forced out of his home and job as manager of a “gay” apartment building because he converted to Christianity? (Read about this in my introduction to Redeeming the Rainbow at
http://www.defendthefamily.com/rtr/)
I have never accused any but a very tiny fraction of homosexual men of being genocidal or cannibalistic “monsters” in the vein of Jeffrey Dahmer, though they dominate the list of “most prolific serial killers and mass murderers.” Look it up! It ISN’T hate to state this fact, or the fact that many of the most important icons of “gay” history (Karl Ulrichs, Henry Gerber, Alan Ginsberg, David Thorstad, Harvey Milk, etc etc ) have been pederasts. Even Harry Hay, the founder of the American “gay” movement was so much a champion of the North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) that he would wear a sign saying “Nambla Walks With Me” in the Gay Pride parades after that group had been banned by organizers. I applaud those organizers. I condemn Harry Hay and NAMBLA. Where is the hate here??
Social leftists may not like these facts but they are facts, and it is decidedly NOT HATE to invoke these facts in a discussion about what social policy our society should be following regarding sexual matters. I, and most of the other “hate groups” on the SPLC list advocate the biblical view that all sex belongs in marriage and all sex outside of authentic marriage should be discouraged by society. We do NOT advocate hate or violence against anyone. We do not even advocate that homosexuality be purged from our society. We just want mainstream culture to go back to being marriage and family centered and for the “gays,” adulterers and other dissenters to go back to discrete sub-cultures that refrain from marching through the streets and taking over public schools to promulgate their agendas. It is self-evident truth (in any objective review of our national history from the 1940s to the present) that the Judeo-Christian model — as a guide to public policy — produces strong families, personal and public health and social stability while the “gay” ethic of “sexual freedom” produces family breakdown, disease and social instability.
The facts cited here are EVIDENCE, not that all homosexuals are evil, but that homosexuality as a FORM OF VOLUNTARY CONDUCT, is, as Pope John Paul best articulated “intrinsically disordered.” It is not hate to believe or state this any more than it is hateful to believe or state that other behavioral problems such as alcoholism or bulimia are disordered. Is Mothers Against Drunk Driving an anti-alcoholic hate group?? Do the eating disorder critics want anorexics and bulimics to be beaten and killed? Give me a break. You insist they’re all “born that way?” Big deal, that doesn’t make my disagreement with you “hate.” And besides, you can’t prove immutability, so we who insist according to simple common sense that young people can ACQUIRE a “gay” identity by experimentation with “gay” sex MUST get the benefit of the doubt in public policy. But I digress.
Thank God that the SPLC is finally being held up to public scrutiny, but it as an organization is only one (very powerful) component of a culture-wide propaganda machine following the Communist strategy of Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals and the “gay” marketing strategy of Kirk and Madsen in After the Ball. Every American, AND EVERY LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICIAL who has been persuaded to view disapproval of homosexuality as hate should read those books to see the nefarious agenda behind the pretty facade of the modern “gay rights.” (See the article on which After the Ball was based for an even more forthright discussion of the “gay“ blueprint: “The Overhauling of Straight America” http://cnsnews.com/blog/pete-winn/gay-playbook-and-how-its-overhauling-america).
The other day Dana Milbank (no conservative he) wrote an editorial for the Washington Post criticizing the SPLC for listing FRC as a hate group.
Kudos to him for fair-mindedness. But he also said in the piece that the “Gays and lesbians are winning the fight for equality by example and persuasion.” That is just plain wrong. The homosexual movement is gaining increasing political control over the various spheres of our society because it controls the most powerful propaganda machine in our nation. One which promotes and zealously guards the public image of homosexuals as only model citizens and paragons of virtue. All contrary opinion or contradictory facts are ruthlessly suppressed. And this has been the case for so long that only a handful of people like myself still dare to challenge them — at enormous personal cost.
The solution to this problem is not a counter-revolution defining homosexuals as only evil and corrupt. That is not our belief or argument. The solution is the reintroduction to the public debate of the truthful factual evidence that homosexuality is NOT a healthy basis for our social order nor a form of sexual conduct to normalize to children. And at the same time we need to offer the reminder that homosexuals who desire to live among us according to their original demand in the 1950s — the right to be left alone — are welcome to do so in the spirit of true tolerance that defined “Don’t ask, Don’t tell.” We really need a civilian version of that for America.
To achieve that, and avoid the moral cliff we are now speeding toward, we need an open and honest public debate about the future of our sexual morality in our society, in which the truth about homosexuality and the homosexual agenda is fully discussed, as well as the Judeo-Christian alternative to the “sexual freedom” model we’ve been suffering under for decades now. One in which Christians and Jews are not cast as “hateful bigots” undeserving of free speech rights. If after that honest debate the public chooses the way of sin, so be it. It wouldn’t be the first time in history. But absent a return to honesty in our public debate the way is clear: increasingly aggressive homo-fascism until Judeo-Christian morality is purged from our culture, and then collapse.
The biggest and most dangerous homo-fascist now on the field is the Southern Poverty Law Center because it wields the power to discredit and marginalize any person or group who is perceived as a threat to the propaganda machine. Every pro-family conservative in America needs to investigate and expose this hateful and hate-mongering organization, especially to the law enforcement and public education communities which still uses SPLC as an education and training resource. And I urge you all to join with me in prayer that God, of His own power, and in a way that is clearly Him and not a human hand, will save the staff and members but completely destroy the SPLC as an entity.
