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Better Know A Hate Group: Scott Lively And Abiding Truth Ministries

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Scott Lively, when it comes to leaders of certified anti-gay hate groups, is one of the more pernicious, having extended his reach around the world. Lively is the founder of Abiding Truth Ministries, and is strongly tied to Uganda’s “Kill The Gays” bill — but that’s just for starters. Lively is also currently being sued in U.S. federal court, accused of violating international law by inciting the persecution of gays.

Our friends at GLAAD note that Scott Lively has “called for the criminalization of ‘the public advocacy of homosexuality’,” “is directly linked to anti-gay legislation in Uganda, which makes simply being gay punishable by death,” and “said: ‘The gay movement is an evil institution that’s goal is to defeat the marriage-based society and replace it with a culture of sexual promiscuity in which there’s no restrictions on sexual conduct except the principle of mutual choice’.”

READ: ‘Kill The Gays’ Architect Scott Lively Pushes Claim ‘Obama May Be Gay And Previously Married To A Man’

Earlier this year, Lively was an invited speaker at a Tea Party rally in Boston, during which he called gays “anarchists” who use “fascist tactics” to “prevent you from being able to have civilization.”

The Southern Poverty Law Center has labeled Lively’s Abiding Truth Ministries an active anti-gay hate group. Here’s what the SPLC says about his Massachusetts-based organization:

Abiding Truth Ministries serves mainly as a launching pad for an international anti-gay campaign. Its founder, Scott Lively, is also responsible for a book, widely cited by gay-bashers, accusing homosexuals of running the Nazi Party.

Lively first emerged as an anti-gay activist when he became communications director for the Oregon Citizens Alliance, which was backing that state’s notorious Measure 9 vote in 1992. The measure, which failed, would have added language to the state constitution listing homosexuality, along with pedophilia and masochism, as “abnormal behavior.” Lively later served as California director of the American Family Association, another particularly hard-line anti-gay group (see below).

Lively is best known for co-authoring, with Kevin Abrams, The Pink Swastika: Homosexuality in the Nazi Party. The book makes a series of claims that virtually no serious historian agrees with: that Hitler was gay, that “the Nazi Party was entirely controlled by militaristic homosexuals,” and that gays were especially selected for the SS because of their innate brutality. The claims are entirely false; in fact, the Nazis murdered significant numbers of gays and made homosexuality a death penalty offense in 1942. In the foreword, Abrams adds that homosexuality is “primarily a predatory addiction striving to take the weak and unsuspecting down with it. … They have no idea of how to act in the best interests of their country… . Their intention is to serve none but themselves.”

Lively has taken his message abroad to Eastern Europe (see Watchmen on the Walls, below), Africa and Russia. In a 2007 open letter to the Russian people, he asserted that “homosexuality is a personality disorder that involves various, often dangerous sexual addictions and aggressive, anti-social impulses.” In 2009, he went to Uganda to speak at a major conference on the evils of homosexuality, saying, among other things: “The gay movement is an evil institution. The goal of the gay movement is to defeat the marriage-based society and replace it with a culture of sexual promiscuity.” He also met with Ugandan lawmakers. A month after Lively left the country, a bill was introduced that called for the death penalty for certain homosexual acts and prison for those who fail to disclose gays’ identities.

The SPLC explains their decision to include an organization on it’s active anti-gay hate groups list:

“Viewing homosexuality as unbiblical does not qualify organizations for listing as hate groups.” Instead,… “the SPLC’s listings of these groups is based on their propagation of known falsehoods — claims about LGBT people that have been thoroughly discredited by scientific authorities — and repeated, groundless name-calling.”

The SPLC also recently took on World Net Daily, home to Scott Lively (read all the way to the end):

WorldNetDaily (WND) describes itself as “an independent news company dedicated to uncompromising journalism, seeking truth and justice and revitalizing the role of the free press as a guardian of liberty.” The online newspaper, which this year celebrated its 15th year in operation, is one of the “very few sources” martial artist and action film hero Chuck Norris (who happens to be a columnist) trusts for news and an operation that megachurch pastor Greg Laurie (also a columnist) says does “a service to God and Country.”

WND is the brainchild of Joseph Farah, a self-described “radical” and longtime antigovernment propagandist and apologist for the Confederacy who believes “cultural Marxists” are plotting “to transform our political system, to change the way we think, to attack our values, to demean our faith in God, to reduce that shining city on the hill to the status of a drab public-housing project.”

Together with a coterie of antigovernment “Patriots,” anti-gay activists, white nationalists, Muslim-bashers, conspiracy theorists, end-times prophets and ultraconservative hardliners, Farah — who did not respond to requests to be interviewed for this article — has built WND into a modest media empire including a book imprint, an online subscription-only “intelligence resource,” and a glossy, full-color monthly magazine. At press time, Alexa, which ranks websites, said WND was the 1,832nd most popular website in the world and the 423rd in the U.S. — just above the site for Nickelodeon and a few notches below Victoria’s Secret.

WND’s point of view is best described as a cross between the now-defunct supermarket tabloidWeekly World News, which was famous for reporting on Elvis sightings, and The New American, a monthly magazine published by the far-right, conspiracist John Birch Society. In its 15 years online, it has introduced readers to a smorgasbord of bizarre ideas, specializing in anti-gay, anti-Muslim, and anti-liberal propaganda; antigovernment conspiracy theories; and end-times prophecy.

It featured a six-part series claiming (falsely) that soybean consumption causes homosexuality and promoted Scott Lively’s vile opus The Pink Swastika, which says that gays were behind the Holocaust. It has identified the first “leftist” as Satan, and declared that Muslims have a “20-point plan for conquering the United States by 2020.” It has warned of secret plans to create a North American Union, advised readers to invest all their assets in gold, and promoted myriad, if conflicting, theories about when and how the world will end.

And why mention all this?

Scott Lively’s op-ed at World Net Daily yesterday: “The Strange, Strange Story of ‘Gay Fascism’ Deniers“:

There has been an article floating around the Internet for a long time by a self-described “gay left-wing man” named Johann Hari, a columnist for the London Independent. The article is titled “The Strange, Strange Story of the Gay Fascists,” and you can read it for yourself at the vehemently pro-”gay” Huffington Post website. It contains the remarkably forthright admission that homosexuality and fascism have always gone hand in hand. Hari writes:

“The twisted truth is that gay men have been at the heart of every major fascist movement that ever was – including the gay-gassing, homocidal Third Reich. With the exception of Jean-Marie Le Pen, all the most high-profile fascists in Europe in the past 30 years have been gay. It’s time to admit something. Fascism isn’t something that happens out there, a nasty habit acquired by the straight boys. It is – in part, at least – a gay thing, and it’s time for non-fascist gay people to wake up and face the marching music.”

Yes, in Scott Lively’s world, anything you read at the Huffington Post is true.

Scott Lively runs an anti-gay hate group. That’s what you need to know.

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‘You Don’t Care’: Gay Congressman Blasts Defense Secretary Over LGBTQ Troops

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U.S. Rep. Eric Sorensen, a Democrat and the first openly gay member of Congress from Illinois, delivered strong criticism of U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, accusing the embattled Pentagon chief of not caring about LGBTQ service members, and fostering an environment where LGBTQ people do not want to join the military. He also brought up the planned renaming of the USNS Harvey Milk, which the Secretary reportedly ordered to intentionally coincide with LGBTQ Pride Month.

Congressman Sorensen told Secretary Hegseth that Harvey Milk, the first openly gay elected official in California, who was assassinated in 1978, served “courageously,” but was forced to resign from the Navy because he was gay.

“You see,” Congressman Sorensen said, “as a kid, all I wanted to be was the weatherman on TV. You know, I learned that I could have gone into the Army or the Navy to learn meteorology. But someone like me was not allowed. They didn’t want someone like me, Mr. Secretary.”

READ MORE: ‘Coup’: What DHS Secretary’s ‘Liberate’ Comment Means, According to Experts

“There wasn’t anything that I could do to change myself, or the way that my nation thought of me. And so I want to keep this very simple. Do you believe that Harvey Milk is a veteran who deserves his country’s thanks?”

Hegseth attempted to dodge the question.

“Sir, the decision to rename the ship was—” Hegseth began.

“I’m just asking, do you believe that Harvey Milk is a veteran who deserves his country’s thanks? Yes or no,” Sorensen pressed.

“If his service was deemed honorable, yes,” the Secretary replied.

“I disagree with your leadership,” Sorensen said, “because I believe that every veteran deserves our thanks. We all walk in the footsteps of leaders before us, and you may not find the value in the fact that many of those people are women, with different skin colors, different backgrounds, different talents, immigrants, gay, straight, transgender, disabled.”

READ MORE: In Reversal, Trump Uses Term Tied to Ethnic Cleansing Amid Renewed Mass Deportation Demand

“You may want to change it, but you can’t. Because the America that you and I both serve is a place where everyone has the ability—or should have the ability—to grow up and be the hero their grandpa was. I wanted to do that when I was a kid.”

“We’re going back to that time,” the congressman warned. “Gay kids like me, they don’t want to go into the Army. They don’t want to go into the Navy, because you don’t care for them. It’s happening all over our country.”

“My grandpa taught me never to judge the value of a veteran’s service. And I hope, Mr. Secretary, you learn to do the same in your capacity, and you can find it in your heart, to make that part of your process.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

READ MORE: Democrats Demand Noem Testify After Handcuffing of US Senator Padilla

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‘Coup’: What DHS Secretary’s ‘Liberate’ Comment Means, According to Experts

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Before her protective squad forcibly removed, detained, and handcuffed a sitting U.S. Senator asking a question at her Los Angeles press conference, U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem delivered remarks that legal and political experts warn are explosive.

“We are not going away,” Secretary Noem vowed, regarding herself and her Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, other DHS operatives, and the U.S. Military, all of whom she promised would “continue to sustain and increase our operations in this city.”

“We are staying here to liberate this city from the socialist and the burdensome leadership that this governor and that this mayor have placed on this country here,” she declared, referring to Democratic California Governor Gavin Newsom and Democratic Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass.

Experts are once again sounding the alarm.

READ MORE: In Reversal, Trump Uses Term Tied to Ethnic Cleansing Amid Renewed Mass Deportation Demand

“I think the governor and mayor of Los Angeles are right,” declared U.S. Senator Adam Schiff (D-CA) on MSNBC on Thursday night. “I think they’re testing out their ability to essentially commandeer National Guards throughout the country, and use them for their own purposes.”

“One thing that got lost in the horrendous treatment of Alex Padilla today,” Schiff continued, “was what Kristi Noem said at that press conference in saying that it was necessary to have these troops there to ‘liberate’ the city from the socialists. That’s the kind of rhetoric the administration is using.”

He went on to say that “the fact that they would abuse the military that way and justify it that way is unconscionable.”

Other critics weighed in as well.

Quoting Secretary Noem’s remarks, Harvard University Professor Emeritus Laurence Tribe, a top constitutional law scholar, wrote: “Using military force to displace a democratically elected state government is called a coup.”

Former prosecutor and former Hill staffer Stephen Rodio remarked, “Trump’s regime is going to liberate us from the people that we elected to represent us.”

“Be clear on what she’s saying here,” wrote podcaster Joe Walsh, a former GOP Tea Party Congressman and now a Democrat and political commentator. “She’s saying that Trump is going to use the U.S. military to overthrow both the duly elected Mayor of Los Angeles & the Governor of California. I understand she’s not very bright, but, in essence, she’s saying the federal government has declared war on California.”

READ MORE: Democrats Demand Noem Testify After Handcuffing of US Senator Padilla

“Quiet Part Out Loud?” asked U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI). “Sounds a lot like she’s saying they’re there to liberate the city from its elected government.

Lincoln Project senior advisor Stuart Stevens also quoted Noem’s remarks, then wrote: “That’s a statement of intent of a coup, to ‘liberate’ a state from legally elected officials. Then armed men tackle and shackle one of those leaders. Nothing about we are here to arrest violent offenders and support law enforcement.”

“The declared purpose is to undo the choice of voters. Nothing like this has ever happened in modern America except the insurrection of Jan. 6th, which Noem supported, including her support for pardoning those who assaulted law enforcement.”

“Greeted as liberators, you say?” wrote Wall Street Journal reporter Alex Ward, appearing to echo former Bush 43 Vice President Dick Cheney’s fated 2003 Iraq War claim.

“Do the decent thing and resign, Noem,” urged former U.S, Rep. Carol Shea-Porter (D-NH). “The world is watching.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Not Today Hegseth’: Dem Slams Defense Secretary as ‘Unfit to Lead’ in Fiery Exchange

 

Image via Reuters

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In Reversal, Trump Uses Term Tied to Ethnic Cleansing Amid Renewed Mass Deportation Demand

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Facing backlash from his base over an announced, possible exemption for undocumented immigrants working in agriculture and hospitality, President Donald Trump has entirely reversed course, now calling for the mass “remigration” of all undocumented individuals. The term “remigration” is closely associated with ethnic cleansing and far-right European movements, including the neo-fascist political party backed by both Trump and his vice president.

In a wild rant steeped in fascist and ethnonationalist rhetoric, Trump baselessly attacked the Biden administration and characterized all undocumented immigrants as takers costing the country billions—despite the fact that the undocumented population is a net economic positive for the United States.

“The Biden Administration and Governor Newscum,” Trump declared Tuesday evening—using his derogatory nickname for California Governor Gavin Newsom—“flooded America with 21 Million Illegal Aliens, destroying Schools, Hospitals and Communities, and consuming untold Billions of Dollars in Free Welfare.”

READ MORE: Democrats Demand Noem Testify After Handcuffing of US Senator Padilla

These claims are not supported by evidence.

“All of them have to go home, as do countless other Illegals and Criminals, who will turn us into a bankrupt Third World Nation. America was invaded and occupied. I am reversing the Invasion. It’s called Remigration. Our courageous ICE Officers, who are daily being subjected to doxxing and murder threats, are HEROES. We will always have their back as they carry out this noble mission. America will be for Americans again!”

Just one day earlier, Trump had declared that undocumented immigrants working on farms, in agriculture, the hotel and entertainment industries are “very good, long time workers,” who are “almost impossible to replace.”

READ MORE: ‘Not Today Hegseth’: Dem Slams Defense Secretary as ‘Unfit to Lead’ in Fiery Exchange

Changes are coming!” he vowed.

“Our farmers,” Trump also said Thursday at a press conference, according to The New York Times, “are being hurt badly by, you know, they have very good workers, they have worked for them for 20 years.”

“They’re not citizens, but they’ve turned out to be, you know, great. And we’re going to have to do something about that. We can’t take farmers and take all their people and send them back because they don’t have maybe what they’re supposed to have, maybe not.”

“We can’t do that to our farmers and leisure, too, hotels,” he said, suggesting an executive order was in the works. “We’re going to have to use a lot of common sense on that.”

All that appears to have been a blip.

READ MORE: ‘Mouthpiece for the Kremlin’: Rubio Scorched for ‘Russia Day’ Congratulations

 

Image via Reuters

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