Scott Lively Ministries

“Thou shall not bear false witness against thy neighbor” is one of the Ten Commandments of God in Exodus 20:16, a grievous sin that is more clearly explained in Exodus 23:1:  Thou shall not raise a false report; put not thine hand with the wicked to be an unrighteous witness.”  Sad to say, these two scriptures today indict virtually an entire American industry, the so-called “mainstream media” (MSM).

There was a time when journalism was a noble profession dedicated to truth-seeking for the good of society.  Journalists performed the essential service of holding public figures and other persons accountable for their speech and actions that impacted public life.  While there were always some scoundrels who misused their power in order to deceive the public to various ends, the community of journalists as a whole saw its truth-telling function as a sacred trust.

The importance of it’s role is reflected in the acknowledgment of the press as the “Fourth Estate,” which along with the Clergy, Nobility and Commoners made up the four components of medieval society.  Whatever the phrase might have meant in 1787 when it was coined by Irish philosopher and statesman Edmund Burke, in terms of power and influence, it has come to mean for modern Americans that the news media operates virtually co-equally with the three branches of our government.

Burke is, of course, best known today for his oft quoted observation, “The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.”  Were he alive in our day, Burke might be forced to recant that axiom, since his designated “Fourth Estate” has now become a force for evil that is arguably stronger than the force of good men of action to oppose it.  The “mainstream” American media has been almost entirely co-opted by reprobate ideologues who use their power to advance their own left-wing social agenda and suppress opposing views (which they do very successfully).

When I was in high school in the 1970s, journalism was my first choice for a possible future career.  In fact, I earned nearly all of my senior year English credits as an intern for the Greenfield Recorder newspaper in Greenfield, Massachusetts.  I was attending an experimental “free school” called the King Philip Project, an extremely socially liberal alternative school of twelve students and eight teachers set up like a hippie commune.  I was a pro-abortion, pro-”gay”  far-left, long-haired pot-smoking radical in those days, and I saw journalism as the perfect career option for me.

Journalism was being sold in those days not just as field for people like myself who wanted to be writers, but as a way for liberal social activists to “change the world.”  I didn’t know back then of the “progressive” movement and its nefarious agenda.  I just wanted to make the world more sympathetic to my worldview.  In the end I chose to follow a different liberal vocation popular with my generation: taking drugs and drinking till it nearly killed me.

Fast forward to the present.   My practical experience, and an encounter with Jesus Christ in 1986, has turned me into a strong and vocal social conservative.  The truths I once disregarded as a “useful idiot” for the progressives, have become the focal point of my life, and advocating them in the public realm is my calling.

Meanwhile, however, the profession of journalism has become the nearly exclusive domain of my former fellow-travelers.  They have for decades been working to “change the world” and have largely succeeded.

Now one certainly can’t lay all of the blame for the moral collapse of our society on the MSM.  Public education has been played a huge part.  Politicians and judges have contributed extensively to the problem.  And of course, we can’t forget that the churches and their pastors and elders bear a major part of the responsibility for abdicating their role as stewards of the civil society.  But pound for pound, nobody’s got the power to shape and steer our culture like the media.  Teachers, college professors, politicians, judges, business, sports and entertainment leaders, even priests and pastors live in fear of the power of the MSM. The news media literally defines reality for the many who use it as their daily source of information, which power can make or break political careers, bolster or destroy reputations, and give the kiss of life or death to products, projects and points of view.

It’s not a monolithic power.  Especially in the past dozen years or so more conservative media and the Internet have arisen as alternatives, which I believe explains the current tremendous polarization of the society (as individual conservatives who have broken free of the influence of the MSM are now banding together and flexing their muscles).  But the liberal media is still a substantially stronger political force that its rivals, and benefits greatly from coalition with the other leftist-controlled social spheres such as academia, the entertainment industry, philanthropic foundations, labor unions, and many federal, state and local governments, agencies and judiciaries.

Moreover, the nature and philosophy of the progressive movement bonds these institutions and bodies together in a unity that conservatives cannot match (absent the leadership of the church, which has thus far been minimal).  Progressivism has a pro-active vision for the future, a Marxist utopian fantasy that, while ludicrous to clear thinkers, serves to keep its activists in perpetual forward motion toward their goal.  Conservatives, on the other hand, tend to be reactionary in short-term bursts of energy to stop or slow the latest progressive initiatives (which always inevitably pass after the conservatives win the first round or so and then go home).

There are countless examples of the false witness of the MSM these days. It defends and promotes the left’s position, and suppresses or misrepresents the right’s position on every significant social controversy: Creation vs. evolution, pro-life vs. pro-abortion, limited government vs. statism, 2nd Amendment vs. gun control, and on and on.

Perhaps the most egregious duplicity of the MSM is on the topic of homosexuality, the most closely guarded of the progressive sacred cows (with the possible exception of evolution).  In my more than 20 years of pubic activism on this topic, including literally hundreds of print, radio and television interviews I have been accurately represented by the MSM only a handful of times and most of these were live or “live on tape” radio or television interviews when my comments were broadcast without editing.  Even in these instances, the news story or segment as a whole was always, without exception, skewed to favor the “gay” perspective.

Liberal journalists absolutely will not represent the homosexual issue honestly.  Even in those rare instances where they allow a pro-family source to make his points without editing, the stories are never truly balanced because they all contain unstated pro-“gay” assumptions:  the innateness and normalcy of homosexuality, the victim status of homosexual as a class of people, the equivalency of homosexuality and heterosexuality as forms of conduct, the legitimacy of “homophobia” as a term to characterize disapproval of homosexuality, the appropriateness of legitimizing homosexuality to children, the idea that homosexual to heterosexual reorientation (in conformity to the design of their bodies) is ridiculous and impossible, and more.

Each of these is an unproven, hotly contested assertion or perspective of the “gay” movement that is rejected by a majority or sizable plurality in our society. Yet all of these are simply assumed to be true in MSM news reporting while the opposing view on each of these points is almost invariably censored, suppressed, misrepresented or mocked.

I was the subject of a feature story recently by Boston Magazine that is typical of the problem.  The writer was a man named Chris Vogel.  As these guys always do when they want an interview, Chris came across as friendly and genuinely interested in presenting a balanced picture of me and what I have to say.  I’ve come to be pretty jaded about such claims but Chris had a sort-of Gomer Pyle puppy-dog enthusiam that was disarming and even a bit endearing.  He also said he was a Christian.  I decided to let him do the story.

Over the next several weeks I met several times with Chris for a total of maybe seven or eight hours.  He came to our Bible study at the little racially diverse inner-city coffee-house church that I pastor.  He came to the courthouse for the oral argument on my Motion to Dismiss the SMUG “Crimes Against Humanity” lawsuit against me for preaching against homosexuality in Uganda.  He even came to church services one Sunday.  Afterward he approached me at the pulpit and in an astonished tone said “Wow.  This is so completely different from what anyone would expect about you.  Such a loving and intimate atmosphere.”  He made a number of such comments in our conversations.

I gave him all the facts and context rebutting all of the slander about me on the Internet and carefully explained in great detail my key pro-family arguments and the reasoning behind them.  He was sympathetic and seemed genuinely understanding and supportive.  His manner was in fact so encouraging that I told him in our final interview that he’d given me real hope that I would finally have a truly balanced mainstream media story I could refer people to as a counter to all of the rest.

Just after saying that, I opened up even more to him as he began asking increasingly more personal questions.  As I was sharing with him an intimate moment of grief about the death of my beloved grandmother I choked up for a moment and looked away.  When I turned back, Mr. Vogel did something shocking.  Looking the picture of empathy and compassion he reached up and wiped away a tear.  Except there was no tear.  It was a completely phony gesture and I suddenly realized that he had been playing me for a fool the entire time.  The guy I thought was among the least dishonest of the journalists had unwittingly revealed himself to be one of the most dishonest of them.

Sure enough, when his article came out it portrayed me as heartless anti-”gay” zealot, “addicted” to political activism.  It described me as being “summoned” to the court to face justice, though I was the one who called the hearing, and suggested that I was cringing before the judge, when it was the opposing attorney being called on the carpet for a badly pleaded complaint.  He described my supporters as a group of just 20 people “huddled together” in the face of  large pro-”gay” crowd of nearly 200 when my side may actually have outnumbered the opponents, and many were interspersed throughout the crowd enthusiastically engaging their counterparts in discussion and debate.

Vogel’s story tacitly perpetuated the lie that I masterminded the so-called “kill the gays” bill, offering this tidy juxtaposition of images to seal the impression:  “A protester shouted, ‘I am the person you want to kill. How does that make you feel?’ Later, Lively told me that he’d slept well the night before.”  What a cold-blooded bastard that Lively must be.

Vogel also wrote:  “Homosexuals, declared [Lively] at one talk, are predators and pedophiles who hunt down children to turn them gay—and worse. ‘You can’t stop [them] from molesting children,” he said, “or stop them from having sex with animals.’”

Not only is this an outrageous misrepresentation of my views and comments, but he all but plagiarized it from the vicious anti-Christian blogger Jim Burroway, whose Goebbels-class cut-and-paste “documentary” of my Uganda seminars may be the low point of all anti-Lively propaganda.  Vogel’s version might actually qualify as plagiarism except that he actually changed and embellished the comments to heighten their inflammatory impact.

Importantly, I had specifically discussed the Burroway attacks with Vogel, and carefully explained how he had misrepresented me.  Indeed, I devoted more than three hours of heart-to-heart conversation with Mr. Vogel about my actual views and underlying reasoning, and the context of my Ugandan lectures and other events that the “gays“ have misrepresented.  He nodded and grunted supportively through the entire conversation, yet not a single mitigating fact or an iota of explanatory context made it into the Boston Magazine article.

To cap it off, even the church service he had been so effusive in praising at the time was transformed in his article to something mostly negative.  He claimed, for example, that I seemed uncomfortable with a church member seeking help with housing issue and “managed to offer her only awkward platitudes of comfort.”  So much for “loving intimacy.”

To be fair, Mr. Vogel did include a quote from one of my church members that “he [Lively] doesn’t hate gay people, and prays for them, and does everything he can to help people.”  And Vogel said that he personally found me “easygoing and affable.”  Perhaps he think that represents balance.  Relatively speaking it was more balance than I usually see in stories of the homosexual issue or about me as an pro-family leader, but from start to finish the article relentlessly perpetuated the homosexualist party line, and only slightly less forcefully affirmed its characterization of me as a heartless anti-“gay” monster.

The article closed with a mention of my comments about a 2012 Springfield natural gas explosion that destroyed a downtown strip club.  I said at the time that it might have been in answer to our prayers about cleaning up our city, and praised God that miraculously no lives were lost in the blast.  Mr. Vogel mean-spiritedly chose to portray me as celebrating the injuries of some utility workers and fireman who were hurt there.  A parting twist of the knife.

The effect of the story on the readers may best be summed up by this online comment following the article by someone identifying himself as Frederick Wright:  “[Lively] is a pure monster worthy of extermination.”

Funny that this sentiment is exactly what I have been falsely accused of fomenting against homosexuals.  Yet, while I condemn anyone who holds this sentiment against homosexuals, and focus all of my rhetoric against the homosexual movement and its agenda (not individuals), the “gays” and their homosexualist allies in the MSM intentionally foster hatred against me personally without apology.

I’ve included only one personal experience with the MSM in support of my accusation that it has become an industry filled with left-wing ideologically-driven professional liars.  However, I could fill literally hundreds of pages with examples from my experience over twenty plus years.  And I know the same is probably true for every seasoned conservative leader on nearly every issue on which the political left and right are polarized.  The only people who will dispute this charge are the MSM journalists themselves, and those people (an unfortunately large number) whose view of reality is still being shaped by these propagandists.

How bad is the problem, really?  The other day Peter LaBarbara of Americans for Truth cornered MSNBC’s Contessa Brewer about balance on the homosexual issue in the media.  Her answer? “You know what’s so funny about this? When we’re talking about racism, nobody ever says, ‘Do you think there’s fair coverage for racists?’ That’s my feeling about the matter. I think that there’s a difference between being objective and being fair. And sometimes wrong is wrong, and the right thing to do is say when it’s wrong.”

Ironically, that’s a pretty forthright answer, but one we‘re unlikely to ever see in in any “mainstream” news story by Brewer or any of her cronies in the MSM.  Why?  Because for their manipulation of public opinion to accomplish its purpose of “making the world a better place,” these “journalists” must always cast themselves as honest and fair-minded.  In other words, even in that they bear false witness.

Despite having won a landmark Supreme Court decision in 2000 upholding its constitutional right to discriminate against homosexuals as scout leaders, the Boy Scouts of America is today just inches away from crying “uncle” and caving in to “gay” pressure.

What is the secret weapon that has all but demolished the BSA’s defenses?  Sexual Orientation Regulations (SORs), specifically the sexual orientation anti-discrimination policies of the Boy Scouts largest corporate donors.  Homosexual agitators are trying to force these corporations to ban donations to the Boy Scouts as a violation of their company SORs.

It’s a clever strategy, but it exposes these SORs for what they really are: a sword to attack people of faith, not a shield to defend “gays” from losing their jobs or their homes.  It’s a lesson we should all have learned about the SORs by now given the steady stream of lawsuits by homosexual activists suing Christians for declining to bake their “wedding” cakes or print their “Gay Pride” posters, or such like.

The simple solution is to amend the SORs with a First Amendment Supremacy Clause: “Under no circumstance shall sexual orientation regulations supercede the First Amendment rights of individuals, churches and religious organizations to freedom of speech and freedom of religion.

For the purpose of this amendment religious organizations are those whose policies or culture are substantially influenced by religious values such as Christian bookstores, adoption agencies or hospitals, as well as companies like Hobby Lobby and Chick Fil A, and social organizations like the Boy Scouts of America and Christian student clubs on college campuses.”

This amendment would stop 99% of abuses by “gay rights” aggressors while preserving 99% of anti-discrimination protections for homosexuals.  It would also save the Boy Scouts.  It should immediately be adopted by every city, state, corporation, college, association and government agency with SORs.

There is no perfect rule that will satisfy both homosexual activists and people of faith.  Our goals are contradictory because the Bible is crystal clear that Christians cannot condone sex outside of authentic marriage, while homosexuals refuse to abide any disagreement with their agenda (which is why they describe all dissenters as mentally ill bigots, i.e. “homophobes.”)

So when conflicts occur between the desire of Christians to live their faith under the protection of the First Amendment and the desire of homosexuals to suppress all disapproval of their perverted lifestyle under the SORs, one legal standard or the other must prevail and the other must fail.  As a society we have to choose whether the sexual orientation regulations or the First Amendment will be the law of our land.

Granted, homosexuals may feel discriminated against when I quote the Bible that homosexuality is an abomination to God.  They want to shut me up.  One of us is going to lose that contest.  At stake is nothing less then the power of the First Amendment to protect my freedom of religious speech.

Let us remember that freedom of religion is the very first principle of the Bill of Rights, just as it was the very first principle of the Magna Charta, the foundation stone of all civil rights law going all the way back to the year 1215.  Freedom of speech is the second principle of the Bill of Rights.  So my right to call homosexuality depraved is deeply rooted in the first two principles of our most fundamental civil rights law.

SORs on the other hand are a late 20^th century invention of the political left to try to shoehorn homosexuality into our civil rights law.  They have no precedent in human rights jurisprudence but were created from thin air.  They literally contradict true civil rights.  How can it be that these legally frivolous, highly controversial regulations are allowed to trump the First Amendment?

In years past, liberals used to say “I may not agree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”  Today, that’s been changed to “Speak against ‘gay’ dogma and I will make you regret it.”  And SORs are the weapon that have given them the power to actually do it.

Let’s remember also that SORs were originally sold to us as a policy to protect homosexuals who “just want to be left alone to live their lives” from unfair discrimination in housing and employment situations where their private sexual conduct was irrelevant.  We never agreed to arm militant “gay” social engineers with legal weapons to hunt down and destroy the lives of people of faith.

I say we drag this issue out into the light of day by launching First Amendment supremacy campaigns wherever we can find these SORs, starting with the corporations under pressure by the “gays” to stop funding the Boy Scouts.  Let’s all work to amend these SORs with a First Amendment Supremacy Clause.  It should be fairly easy to do in many cases, especially in more socially conservative parts of the country, such as Oklahoma where a group has launched such a campaign just this month. Indeed, there are many cities, companies and other entities that will likely welcome this amendment to curb or prevent the sort of abuses mentioned above.

Even in more liberal areas we should work to amend the SORs and hold every decision-maker accountable for their stand on the First Amendment.  How many city council members, for example, when pressed in front of an audience to choose the SORs or the First Amendment will say their city  SORs should trump the First Amendment?  That would likely end their political career, and rightly so.

This is not to say that SORs are transformed into good public policy by the amendment.  It is better not to allow them in at all, because they tend to legitimize unhealthy sexual lifestyles that society should instead discourage.  Discrimination against homosexual conduct (indeed all sex outside of authentic marriage) is a social good, not a social evil.  However, where SORs are already established and being used as a weapon against Christians and other people of religious values, this amendment is an important and effective compromise.

In conclusion, the First Amendment Supremacy Clause is the solution to the problems caused by the SORs and the radical “gay” activists they have empowered.  It substantially preserves both employment and housing protections for homosexuals and religious liberty for Christians while stopping the “gay” movement from destroying the Bill of Rights and venerable American institutions like the Boy Scouts of America.

The next time you’re at a “gay ’ wedding with political, media or other important pro-gay-marriage celebrities, and one of them gets up with a glass of wedding punch to toast Partner A and Partner B for their courage to “be themselves,” here’s a question to shout out (in a feigned drunken slur) from the back:  “Hey, Dude, why don’t you support bi-sexual marriage too?  Are you some kind of bigot?“

Chances are if you’re reading this article, you’re not the sort of person likely to be found at such an event, but the point is that bi-sexual marriage is the very last thing that any of our opponents want to discuss, and we pro-family conservatives should really be forcing them to do it at every opportunity.

Think about it.  A bi-sexual marriage would require an absolute minimum of four people.  You’d have same sex partners A and B just like in the “gay marriage,” but you’d also need to have a heterosexual partner for both A and B.

You couldn’t get by with the same heterosexual partner for both A and B since that would mean Partner C wasn’t really a bi-sexual, but a polygamous heterosexual. (And we all know from “gay” activist rhetoric that polygamy can’t be a true sexual orientation.  There’s never been a  P in LGBT!)

So, for example. Male Bisexual Partner A would be partners with both Male Bisexual Partner B and Female Bisexual Partner C, While Male Bi-Sexual Partner B would be partners with Male Bi-sexual Partner A and Female Bi-Sexual Partner D.

I know it’s confusing  but bear with me because this is important stuff.  We’re talking essential human and civil rights for one of the four key groups in the LGBT community!  In fact, one could argue that bisexuals are the most important sexual minority because they are the most neglected, even more than T’s (transvestites and transsexuals).  No-one ever seems to talk about the rights of the Bs, not even their fellow Ls, Gs, and Ts.

Lets try it again with real names.  We start with a bi-sexual base couple Albert and Bob.  Albert chooses Carla as his female bisexual partner, and Bob chooses Dorothy.  That’s four people in the “marriage.”

But here’s where the real confusion comes in.  Suppose (and this seems more likely than not), that Carla and Dorothy don’t love each other (really, what are the odds that they would, since they were picked by Albert and Bob, not each other?),  You can’t force them to accept each other as a marriage partner.  After all, wasn’t that the problem with assuming that “gays“ should be forced to marry opposite sex partners in the dark ages of exclusively heterosexual marriage?  So to be fair to Carla and Dorothy (and avoid a nasty anti-discrimination lawsuit), you’d have to let each o them choose their own male bisexual partner.

So therefore we need to add Partners E and F.  We’re now up to six people in the marriage.

But wait.  Now you’ve got two new marriage partners with the right to choose their second partners (which partners are likely not already part of the group).  So we have to add Partners G and H.  That’s eight and counting.  You see the compounding nature of this problem.

So the only real way to implement true “bi-sexual marriage”  is to remove all restrictions on the number of partners in a marriage.   Such a simple answer, but still completely untenable  to the vast majority of Americans.

Thus we now know the reason it has never been addressed by our opposition, and the reason we pro-family advocates should all immediately begin raising “bi-sexual marriage” in every public conversation about “gay” marriage.

Is “bi-sexual marriage” really relevant?   Of course it is!  Bisexuals are a core constituency of the LGBT movement.  The other side CAN’T disavow them!  They are the 800-lb gorilla in the room.  Or, if you will, the “turd” in the punchbowl.

I debated whether to use that phrase, it being so crude, but in the end that’s the main reason I finally adopted it.  “’Turd in the punchbowl” is a long-standing working-class metaphor for something dirty that completely ruins something clean.  Once the crowd realizes there is a turd in the punchbowl, nobody is going to drink the punch.  Ever.  No matter what you do to it.

Marriage as God designed it is a clean and holy institution that sanctifies the sexual union of a man and a woman united as “one flesh.”  It produces blessing for them and for society.

Marriages based on various forms of sodomy are unclean counterfeits that destroy true marriage by invalidating its central purpose, which is to enclose the procreative natural family in a socially unique protective cocoon.  Once marriage stops being unique to the “one flesh” male/female procreative union, the concept of marriage loses all meaning.

Importantly, the arguments for “bisexual marriage” are EXACTLY the same as for “gay marriage” and bisexuals are already in line for it as a core constituency of the LGBT coalition.

Abolishing the limitation on the number of marriage partners is thus the logical and inevitable next step in marriage “reform.”  That’s what bringing up “bi-sexual marriage” proves, and why it should be the number one talking point for our side to put every pro-“gay” politician, celebrity and media figure on the defensive.

Here’s the game plan crew.  Put them on the spot in every public forum.  They’re liberals so you know they’re going keep drinking the Kool-Aid, but maybe if we’re diligent in this truth-exposing tactic we can deter a few of them (and most the members of the audience) from drinking the punch.

On January 25^th of this year the Russian State Duma, its highest legislative body, voted to prohibit homosexual advocacy to children, following the enactment of similar legislation in a number of Russian cities including St. Petersburg, and Novosibirsk (the capitol city of Siberia).

http://www.pravoslavie.ru/english/59099.htm .  Go Ruskies!

I am personally very pleased to see this development, having called specifically for legislation of this sort in my speaking tour of the former Soviet Union in 2006 and 2007.  During that tour, which began in the Russian Far East city of Blagoveschensk and ended in St. Petersburg, I lectured in a variety of venues including numerous universities, churches and conference halls, and met with numerous government leaders at various levels of influence.  The entire tour spanned approximately 50 cities in seven countries: Russia, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Ukraine, and Belarus (we also passed through Kazakhstan but didn‘t speak there).

Toward the end of the tour I published, from St. Petersburg, A Letter to the Russian People (see below) which summarized my central message that I had shared in well over 300 lectures, sermons and media interviews during the prior year.

My pro-family message was warmly welcomed by the people of each of these countries, and to varying degrees the homosexual agenda has been slowed in all of them.  To my knowledge the only two Eastern European countries to pass pro-family legislation designed to curtail the spread of homosexuality are Russia and Lithuania, which are coincidentally, the only two countries to whose people I wrote an open letter.  My Lithuanian letter can be viewed online at www.defendthefamily.com.

My purpose in writing this article is to contrast the positive developments in the former Soviet Union with recent anti-family developments in the west and to offer a better way forward.  Victory is still theoretically possible for the pro-family movement in the west if we are willing to pay the price.

On February 1^st of this year I was in tiny Eynsham, England, meeting with a small group of pro-family leaders representing tendrils of our movement in England, Scotland and Wales.  The original purpose of my visit to that country was to debate same-sex “parenting” at Oxford University.  That event fell through for me due to some serious bungling of my invitation details (which I now suspect was deliberate), but not before I had booked non-changeable travel plans.  God redeemed the entire mess by bringing this amazing little group together on very short notice and uniting several of us on a task that promises the potential of great fruit.  More on that in future.

The more important point to this article is that as we were meeting, the main news of the week in all of the headlines was the pending vote on “gay marriage” in the British House of  Commons.  Across the channel the very same scenario was playing out in France.  And across the pond, the very last non-religious institution to publicly reject homosexuality in this country, the Boy Scouts of America, was about to vote on allowing homosexuals into leadership.  By the end of the week both Britain and France had fallen to the “gays“ by sizable margins, and the Boy Scouts had postponed their decision (a hopeful outcome but far from a true pro-family victory).

To my mind, the events of the week were merely confirmation of the spiritual nature of the global “culture war” and further evidence of the biblical end-times.  I’m personally persuaded (though I could be wrong) that we have reached the age of apostasy warned about in scripture and that events are rushing toward the grand conclusion detailed in prophesy.  However, this end-times perspective, which is increasingly popular in the United States is not as widely shared by Christians in the UK.  My analysis was politely challenged by several of the attendees of our meeting whose theological and practical premise is that it is still possible to win this culture war and defeat the “gay” agenda, returning the society to some form of family-centered cultural consensus.

There is a way to win this war,” I conceded, but it so extraordinarily difficult that I don’t believe our people can bring themselves to do it.  We need to completely reject the humanistic presuppositions of the debate on homosexuality as they now exist, and get re-grounded in the presuppositions of the Bible.  In short we cannot possibly create or even preserve public policy that implicitly or explicitly disapproves of homosexuality while conceding the anti-biblical premise that discrimination against homosexuals is morally and legally wrong.  We must be able — and willing — to build all of our arguments on the premise that homosexuality itself is wrong and therefore homosexual “marriage,” “parenting,” etc are wrong.

The most important thing that I have learned in my long career fighting for biblical values is that world-view dictates policy.

In late February of 2011 I made a short-term mission trip to Moldova.  The purpose of the trip was to hold a seminar for the leaders and key activists of that country’s fledgling pro-family movement.  However, providentially, the day before my arrival the government launched a semi-secret campaign to pass a law prohibiting discrimination on the basis of “sexual orientation” (at the behest of the European Union).  Instead of holding a seminar, I and my hosts organized an emergency national campaign to kill that bill, which we did in a matter of days.  The argument I drafted for this campaign cuts right to the bottom line of the culture war:  “An anti-discrimination law based upon sexual orientation is the seed that contains the entire tree of the homosexual agenda with all of its poisonous fruit.” This is the simplest and most straightforward explanation of how the other side has won and we have lost all the battles of the culture war for the past half century.  If you allow that seed to be planted, and fail to target your efforts at uprooting it, you will lose every subsequent conflict over time.  It is a logical necessity.

In 2012 I took that theme to Springfield, Missouri where the city council had announced plans to adopt a similar anti-discrimination law.  We called this proposal a “Gay Fascism Bill,” to highlight its ultimate goal, to suppress all pro-family opposition to homosexuality and to punish dissenters.  Once again, by educating people about the fascist nature of the anti-discrimination laws, and using the simple one-sentence argument highlighted above, we rallied a large number of opponents and killed the bill (at least for now).

The key to pro-family victory is preventing any more “Gay Fascism Bills” from being adopted, and uprooting the seeds that have already been planted, all toward the openly declared goal of discouraging all sex outside of marriage for the health of our society.  Anything less is futile, except to slow the process of homosexual control.  It can be done if we have the will and are willing to pay the price.  I stand ready to assist any group of pro-family advocates willing to try.

Dr. Scott Lively

Sdllaw@gmail.com

www.defendthefamily.com

Letter to the Russian People

I am Dr. Scott Lively, President of Defend the Family International, a human-rights organization based near Los Angeles, California. I hold a Juris Doctor of Law from Trinity Law School, a Doctor of Theology from the School of Bible Theology (both of which schools are in California), and a certificate in human rights from the International Institute of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France. I am the author of the Riga Declaration on Religious Freedom, Family Values and Human Rights, and several books, including The Pink Swastika: Homosexuality in the Nazi Party, which is currently being translated into Russian for publication in 2008.

I have just completed a speaking tour through your beautiful country and have come to love your culture and your people. I had the privilege of visiting numerous Russian cities, from Vladivistok and Blagoveschensk in the Far East, to several cities in Siberia, and St. Petersburg in the West. I’ve been impressed by how much Russians are like Americans in many ways: both are intelligent, resourceful, competitive and entrepreneurial. These similarities are both good and bad. They are good in that our nations have a foundation for friendship, but they are bad in that they make Russia vulnerable to the same destructive forces that have harmed America.

The purpose of my visit was to bring a warning about the homosexual political movement which has done much damage to my country and which has now taken root in Russia. This is a very fast-growing social cancer that will destroy the family foundations of your society if you do not take immediate, effective action to stop it.

Homosexuality is a personality disorder that involves various, often dangerous sexual addictions and aggressive, anti-social impulses. This combination of factors causes homosexuals to have an intense loyalty to each other and a common goal to change any society in which they live in organized “gay and lesbian” communities. They have no acceptance in a society that restricts sex to heterosexual marriage, so they work to eliminate sexual morality and remove all limitations on sexual conduct. Importantly, their initial strategy is not promote homosexuality, but to spread sexual immorality among heterosexuals, especially the young people. Only later, when the culture has become sexually corrupt, do they openly step forward to take power as the natural leaders of such a society.

The process of change always begins with the institutions which shape the thinking and behavior of young people. First comes the promotion of sexual promiscuity through mass media, then the introduction of high-profile “gay” celebrities such as Elton John and George Michael, then the development of “gay” political cells in the universities. Later comes the advocacy of “gay rights” by politicians and community leaders.

It is no accident that Hollywood promotes sexual immorality. The American entertainment media is heavily influenced, in some cases controlled, by professional homosexual activists who use television, movies and music as a tool of social engineering. Russian youths are being shaped in this way, just as American youths were, beginning in the late 1950s. However, the now wealthy and powerful global homosexual movement has perfected its tactics and can transform a society very rapidly.

Some Russian universities, especially in the larger cities, now have “gay and lesbian” clubs. Remember that their focus is always on the young people. The homosexuals know they can’t change the values of the older people, but that young people, especially those who are sexually active or cohabiting, are easily persuaded to accept homosexuality as just another lifestyle. In fact, many young people become active defenders of homosexuality, because the “gay” movement portrays all homosexuals as helpless victims of societies who “just want to be left alone to love whom they please.” The universities serve as recruitment centers for both homosexuals and their heterosexual allies and protectors.

The homosexual movement tries to win public sympathy by claiming that homosexuals are “born that way” and cannot change. This is not true. There is a large association of doctors and therapists in the United States who help homosexuals to recover (see www.narth.com) and many thousands of former homosexuals who now live normal lives. But unfortunately, there is an even larger network of homosexual activists and their allies (backed by the full power of the European Union, some US agencies and institutions, and numerous international NGOs), who insist that homosexuality is unchangeable and must be protected by government. Their goal is to pass a law prohibiting discrimination against homosexuals, which then serves as a legal foundation for the rest of their agenda: publicly funded and protected “gay pride” parades in every city, homosexual marriage or its equivalent, promotion of homosexuality to schoolchildren, full acceptance of homosexuality in every part of society, and punishment of people who disagree.

Unfortunately, many Russians believe this could never happen in their country. That’s what we believed in the United States. But the change has already begun in Russia. Just talk to the university students in the major cities, or search on the Internet for “gay” activities in your own city. There was a “gay pride” parade this August in Omsk, the Novosibirsk newspapers are now printing “gay” dating ads, there are at least three “gay” Internet sites for teenagers in Krosnoyarsk, and Saint Petersburg already has a population of homosexual men who meet for sex in certain public parks. These examples may seem like a small threat considering the strong opposition to homosexuality in most of Russian society, but I beg you not to ignore these warning signs. They are like the smoke from a forest fire. If you wait until you can see the flames from your own house it will be too late.

What can be done to protect Russia from the “gay” movement?

First, begin an immediate campaign in every city to promote marriage and family values, and to discourage sexual promiscuity and cohabitation. Young people at every grade level should receive age-appropriate instruction on why sexual morality and family values are important to their future, and older students should learn how to prepare to be a good husband or wife. Every city should offer marriage seminars and counseling to help strengthen existing families. Cities should celebrate family life and offer many pro-family programs and activities.

Second, begin training doctors, psychologists and therapists in the techniques of helping homosexuals to recover, and offer this therapy as a public service. Promote recovery for homosexuals in public advertising and reach out to young people who may suffer from same-sex attraction. Catch it early and spare these youths a lifetime of pain and suffering. Importantly, if Russian authorities publicly promote recovery for homosexuals, the “gays” will not be able to deceive the public with their “born the way” propaganda.

Third, criminalize the public advocacy of homosexuality. My philosophy is to leave homosexuals alone if they keep their lifestyle private, and not to force them into therapy if they don’t want it. However, homosexuality is destructive to individuals and to society and it should never publicly promoted. The easiest way to discourage “gay pride” parades and other homosexual advocacy is to make such activity illegal in the interest of public health and morality.

Fourth, develop family-friendly media alternatives to the immoral products now being imported from the U.S. and Europe. Russian society is rich with talented people. Russian media companies should become competitors for the hearts and minds of the young people, and even set the example for how to produce good quality entertainment that uplifts, not degrades, the human spirit.

It is no secret that the Russian Federation is in competition with the nations of the West, but there is one area in which Russia could quickly take global leadership: family values. While the United States and Europe continue to alienate their family-oriented citizens by following the destructive path of “sexual freedom,” Russia could become a model pro-family society. If this were to occur, I believe people from the West would begin to emigrate to Russia in the same way that Russians used to emigrate to the United States and Europe. Russia might even win back the sympathies of its former states, such as Poland, Latvia and Lithuania, which are now chafing under the pro-homosexual demands of the European Union.

In conclusion, all successful civilizations rest on the foundation of the natural family: men and women united in marriage, devoted to bearing and raising morally healthy children who will replace them in the next generation. This foundation will always be strong in nations which discourage sexual conduct outside of marriage. But wherever the “gay: philosophy of unlimited sexual freedom is accepted, the family structure disintegrates. The Russian people have an important choice before them: to promote marriage and family values, leading to social health or to allow the spread of sexual immorality, leading to social disorder. I pray you will choose the family.

Top 10 Heroes of the Pro-Family Movement in 2012

Friends,

I know you are being deluged with year-end donation requests as am I.  My standard for giving follows three criteria: 1) Biblical faithfulness, 2) Courage, 3) Effectiveness.  According to this standard my personal choices for the Top 10 most deserving recipients of your financial support in 2012 are:

1.  Liberty Counsel (my personal heroes for coming to my rescue on the SMUG lawsuit). http://www.lc.org/index.cfm?PID=23329

2.  Mass Resistance (my new nickname for our stout-hearted Maccabaean  brother Brian Camenker is “Brian the Hammer”) https://www.massresistance.us/cc_donations.html

3.  Americans For Truth About Homosexuality (Never was there a more resolute champion of the pro-family cause, or a more honest journalist than Peter LaBarbara). http://americansfortruth.com/donate/

4.  World Net Daily (I’ve never met Joseph Farah personally but I greatly admire his courage and agree with nearly everything he writes).   Buy some books at his bookstore: http://superstore.wnd.com/

5.  Chick Fil A (go buy another chicken sandwich)

6.  Family Research Council (thank Tony Perkins for taking on the SPLC and not going soft after the assassination attempt) https://www.frc.org/

7.  Mission America (Linda Harvey is a great lady taking a brave stand in defense of the children and Biblical values). http://www.missionamerica.com/

8.  American Family Association, Especially Bryan Fisher (Mr. No-Nonsense on the radio, representing one of the most important organizations in our country). https://donate.afa.net/

9 AFA of PA (Ditto for Diane Gramley) http://afaofpa.org/

10.  Abiding Truth Ministries (It’s my list so I get to nominate myself, but go to our website to see for yourself if we meet the standard).   http://www.defendthefamily.com/

Apologies to all of the other great pro-family groups and leaders out there.  This is just my own personal top ten for 2012.

Blessings,

Dr. Scott Lively

Friends,

The above note was left on my front gate a couple of weeks ago anonymously.  It reflects the attitude of hatred that has been generated against me by the radical left here in my own community.

I also recently received the following death threat in my voicemail late one night:

“Denounce the Uganda Nazi bill or I will hang you and burn you alive, you disgusting Nazi maggot.  You’re a Nazi.  You’re not a human.  You’re a parasitic maggot and if you don’t get the f*** out of this country you will die.”

Here it is in MP3 threattoscott

For my ministry 2012 has been The Year of the Smear.  Click on this link for a two page summary in PDF of the persecution we have endured, complete with photographs.  It is a reminder that those who dare to stand up to the homosexual movement pay a heavy price.  I want also to remind you that I rely entirely upon donations to remain in this most difficult mission field.  As we approach the final days of 2012 please remember my ministry in your year-end giving by making a tax deductible donation at http://www.defendthefamily.com/help/donate.php.  And please forward this message to your pro-family friends.

Blessings in Jesus,

Pastor Scott Lively

This week marks the anniversary of the adoption of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations.  December 10^th is International Human Rights Day.  Unfortunately, this is a day celebrated mostly by leftists, who have hijacked “human rights” in recent times to serve their own misguided agenda.  However, true human rights as they have been understood through the centuries spring from and epitomize the biblical world view.

Unlike most of the left wing activists exploiting International Human Rights Day as an opportunity to attack Christianity and champion sexual perversion,  I am actually a credentialed human rights attorney with special U.N. sponsored training in Strasbourg. I am also author of the Riga Declaration on Religious Freedom, Family Values and Human Rights which documents that religious freedom and family values have been staunchly protected in 4000 years of written human rights law, but that the “right” of homosexuality is an invention of modern liberalism.

Moreover, this “right to sodomy” actually undermines true human rights, as exemplified by the collapse of the Magna Charta (alternately spelled Magna Carta) in the United Kingdom. The first principle of that venerable human rights document declares that “The English Church shall be free.” This principle, established in the bedrock of British jurisprudence in 1215, stood unshakable for nearly 800 years until the rise of the “gay” movement which has in just the past decade achieved the power to redefine religious liberty as “homophobia” and to crush it under the heels of its pink jackboots.

One of the highlights of my world travels was having the opportunity to see one of the original handwritten copies of the Magna Charta at Salisbury Cathedral in England.  It is one of only three remaining of the original eleven.  That was in 1997 on my way to complete my studies at the University of Strasbourg‘s Institute for International Human  Rights.  On that day the Magna Charta still stood.

Exactly ten years later in 2007, on my way to Warsaw, Poland to speak on human rights at the World Congress of Families IV, I made a brief stop in Dublin, Ireland.  There I met with a Christian street activist who was literally in hiding from the police under threat of arrest for speaking against homosexuality on the public sidewalks in violation of the new Sexual Orientation Regulations (SROs).  The bulwark of the Magna Charta could no longer protect this Christian brother.  After eight centuries it had finally been breached — by militant activists of the “gay” movement.  The news stories coming out of the UK since then paint an increasingly dismal picture for believers.

Today there is only one human rights document still standing as a barrier to the homosexual agenda in the west: the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. Indeed, this is the very source of the religious liberty and freedom of speech clauses of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights upon which all modern human rights laws and treaties rest.  (The first half of the Universal Declaration was drafted by the Americans, the latter half by the Soviets in the days following the completion of the Nurenberg war crimes trials of the Nazi leaders by the Allies).

Yet despite the emergence of the Universal Declaration and all of its statutory progeny, no country in the world has been as stalwart in defense of religious liberty and freedom of speech as the United States — because of the First Amendment.   However, even as we celebrate International Human Rights Day, the First Amendment is under siege by the same forces that brought down the Magna Charta.  In recent years it has survived a series of assaults that continue to grow in frequency and severity with no end in sight.

In less than a month, on January 7^th, 2013 I will appear in federal court here in Springfield, Massachusetts with my attorney from Liberty Counsel.  There, he will present our oral argument in support of our Motion to Dismiss the case against me for “Crimes Against Humanity.”   I am being sued by Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG) for preaching against homosexuality in that country.  At issue is the strength of the First Amendment to protect my right to preach the Gospel in a foreign country.

In essence, the Plaintiffs contend that the same European embrace of homosexual “human rights” that empowered the SORs of the UK and took down the Magna Charta represents a new international legal norm that must be enforced across the globe.  Thus, even though preaching against homosexuality is protected speech both in Uganda and the United States, I should be held liable for it based on SMUG’s interpretation of “international law.”  Granted, it seems ridiculous, but so did the idea of the SORs before they became law in the UK.

I would like to take the opportunity of this anniversary to call for prayer.  Not so much for myself, but for our nation.  Because a loss to these plaintiffs under these pleadings would mean a breach of  First Amendment in the same manner as the Magna Charta.  If the First Amendment cannot protect my rights of religious liberty and freedom of speech in a foreign country, how much less will they protect all of us here in our own country.  Indeed, haven’t we already begun to see “sexual orientation” trump religious liberty (and to a lesser extent freedom of speech) as a legal trend?  How much worse will it be if the federal courts accept European legal reasoning in their rulings?

My friends, understand the gravity of what I am saying.  If the First Amendment falls to the “gays” like the Magna Charta did,  true human rights will be finished in America (and by extension the rest of the western world).  There is no fall-back position.  The First Amendment is the last bastion of freedom for Christians.  If it fails, serious persecution of all who dare to speak the truth of the Bible will follow close behind.  Pray fervently that it will stand!