Scott Lively Struggles With Uganda’s Death Penalty

Jim Burroway

May 27th, 2010

Current TV’s Vanguard reporter Mariana van Zeller has posted some outtakes from her outstanding documentary “Missionaries of Hate“. Already, we saw a six-minute interview with Ugandan MP David Bahati, who introduced the Anti-Homosexuality Bill into Parliament in October 2009. What follows is an extended clip of her interview with Scott Lively, the American holocaust revisionist who delivered his infamous “Nuclear Bomb” at the March 2009 conference in Kampala that set the stage for the bill.

Lively leads off with the boast that he was “one of the people that helped to start the pro-family movement there. … This was all new to them.” And so they asked him to speak. It’s an interesting boast.  Lively claims credit for parachuting into this lost country and setting up a “pro-family” movement. Those poor Ugandan’s couldn’t have done it without him. But criticizing him for firming up the conditions that facilitated the Ugandans who put forth and supported the Anti-Homosexuality Bill, well, that’s racist to suggest Ugandans weren’t capable of doing this all on their own. (Of course, nobody has suggested such a thing. We’ve only noted his active participation in the process.) Yet there’s not even the slightest hint that this glaring contradiction has ever crossed his mind.

This clip also provides clearer context to Lively’s statement in the documentary where he calls the bill the “lesser of two evils,” the two evils being the bill itself or allowing the so-called “gay agenda” to take over Uganda. In the documentary, it wasn’t entirely clear whether the form of the bill he was endorsing as the “lesser of two evils” included or excluded the death penalty. In this clip, he’s more clearly against the death penalty, but he really has to struggle with it for quite a while before he gets there. After mulling over a few possibilities for its inclusion, he finally says, “I don’t believe that it’s… that I could support it that way.” Even still, it looked to me as though he was reluctant to say even this much against the bill. He looks as if he still needs some convincing.

Watch:

Unofficial Rush Transcript

van Zeller: Why did you go to Uganda?

Lively: Well, I went to Uganda because I was actually one of the people that helped to start the pro-family movement there. They were finding people there, primarily homosexual men from Europe and the United States coming into the country and working to try to change the social values. And they didn’t know what to do. They had never had a pro-family movement. This was all new to them. If we do nothing then we’re going to end up like the United States and Britain and Canada, you know, with a powerful gay movement just basically overwhelming everybody else’s values and forcing their agenda down everybody’s throats. So they wanted to draft some kind of law. And it wasn’t written at that point. It was just sort of the idea that they wanted to do something. So they invited me to come and speak along with a couple of other people from the U.S., and I did.

van Zeller: So then let me ask you very bluntlty. Dr. Lively, do you condemn this anti-gay bill in Uganda?

Lively: It’s my understanding they’re going to remove the death penalty. But if they keep the death penalty in it, yes, I condemn the death penalty for sexual crimes.

van Zeller: But all the other clauses, do you then support the rest of the bill if you remove the death penalty part?

Lively: I would not have written the bill this way. I said don’t emphasize punishment, emphasize rehabilitation. You could be the first country in the world to have a government-sponsored ex-gay therapy, where someone struggling with this would have the option of being able to go into this instead of being punished for it. And them I said, moreover, and as a separate matter, but within the law, you should emphasize marriage in your country. This is how you can deal with this. Nationwide, proactively, you begin the teach the value and the imports of marriage to every child in your schools from, at an age-appropriate instruction, all the way down to kindergarten, in which you help your children to see marriage as their goal.

van Zeller: Some people would even say it was written by some religious leaders such as Martin Ssempa.

Lively: I don’t think he wrote it. I think it was…

van Zeller: He was the influence of the writing of the bill.

Lively: Oh, I have no doubt. I have no doubt, I mean, politics works the same everywhere. There’s always a constituency that’s more interested than other people in a law being passed.

van Zeller: There have been a lot of American Evangelicals who have distanced themselves from this bill. What do you think of that?

Lively: Well I think that there’s, in the United States, the church is too heavily influenced by media opinion, and unfortunately, even pastors can go running for the hills when they think they are going to be smeared. Like I said, I would not have written the bill this way. But what it comes down to is a question of lesser of two evils, you know like many of the political choices that we have. What is the lesser of two evils here? To allow the American and European gay activists to continue to do to that country what they’ve done here? Or to have a law that may be overly harsh in some regards for people who are indulging in voluntary sexual conduct? I think the lesser of two evils is for the bill to go through.

van Zeller: Even with the death penalty attached to it?

Lively: Even with the death penalty… well, if it’s clearly restricted to pedophiles… I still don’t… No, I’ve told them I won’t support it if it has the death penalty in it. So even with that, I think that would do more harm… It’s, it’s, it’s just that’s the sort of vice that you’re sort of trapped in here. It’s two very extreme positions, and they’re… The Ugandans could have gone the middle course, and they didn’t have to go this far. So you’re sort of… people like myself are sort of stuck. Am I going to endorse something that goes too far to protect the whole society? You know, and I guess I have to say just on my principles I don’t believe that it’s… that I could support it that way.

van Zeller: Martin Ssempa said to us that he thought that all of these American Evangelicals that were now distancing themselves from the bill, and particularly Rick Warren, were “wimpy.” That’s what, the word he used. What do you think?

Lively: Well, I think he’s right. I think there’s a lot of the wimp factor in American Christianity. I wrote an essay on that theme several years ago called “Masculine Christianity” And it bemoans the sort of effeminacy that’s sort of crept into Christianity where Christian men, especially, don’t stand up for right and wrong and they run away when pressed with controversial issues. It’s just unfortunate. It doesn’t mean they don’t have good theology. It doesn’t mean they aren’t doing great things in their churches with the families that are there. But the real problem in American today isn’t what’s happening inside the church buildings. It’s what’s happening in the culture.

If I had been Rick Warren and I had been presented with this situation, I would have defended Martin Ssempa…

van Zeller: So you’re still a good friend and supporter of Martin Ssempa?

Lively: Yes. I think Martin Ssempa is a good man. He’s trying to protect all the children of his country from being homosexualized.

van Zeller: Do you think that your ideas regarding homosexuality are better received in Uganda than they are here in the United States?

Lively: [Laughs] Of course. Yeah, that’s a… well, Uganda is a Christian country and America is really not a Christian country anymore. There’s a lot of Christians still, but the people who are the gatekeepers sitting in the seats of power generally are not. And they’re following a very humanistic value system that is anti-Biblical in many ways.

Jafuf

May 27th, 2010

HUH! I’ve never seen this moron before. Does anyone believe this guy is straight? Obviously he’s yet another closet case who can’t deal with his own homosexuality.

Richard Rush

May 27th, 2010

In this clip, he’s more clearly against the death penalty, but he really has to struggle with it for quite a while before he gets there. After mulling over a few possibilities for its inclusion, he finally saying, “I don’t believe that it’s… that I could support it that way.”

The thing that is clear to me is that Lively is only struggling with what to say in this interview. He has been immersed in the Uganda bill issue since it’s inception, so he knows exactly where he stands. His only struggle is with what to say for public consumption.

PW

May 27th, 2010

Since Mr. Lively is so concerned about not being a wimp, I suggest, if this disgusting law passes, that Mr. Lively leave his comfortable armchair and take his macho behind over to Uganda and take personal charge of rounding up all the ‘enemies of the state’. That way he can explain to these people how in the name of his deity and his religion that he stirred up the people of Uganda against them. Maybe he can find the guts to personally pull the trigger or insert the needle since he is so proud of his alleged morals and the hatred he has stirred up. And maybe while doing it he can wear the appropriate black arm band with the usual emblem that is typical of thugs posing as protectors of society.

chrissypoo

May 27th, 2010

More in likely that all the religious figures that started this mess, and suddenly reversed like Lively here, are the ones calling the MP with secret support.

Tom

May 27th, 2010

Richard R, that is exactly what I see every time I see it — he knows exactly where he stands but he’s afraid to “man up” and be honest and just come out and say it.

PW – right on, what you said!
“Maybe he can find the guts to personally pull the trigger or insert the needle since he is so proud of his alleged morals and the hatred he has stirred up.”

Scott Lively, Ssempa, Porno Pete % Matt, Fischer, Sprigg, Engle, Perkins et al. exhibit all of the signs of sociopathic personality disorders (not to mention the obvious obsessions with sex).

I’d bet they secretly hope and pray that one or two of their “less balanced” followers will hear the voice(s) of god and go nutz on a crowd of LGBT folk. They want to “send a message” so badly that they can taste it — ah, but these pesky laws we have about murdering people? … well, they’re working on that for us every time they demonize us, with every lie, every disgusting mis-characterization — Uganda is their testing ground for what they want to see happen here — they’re working to get their people into all levels of public policy-making positions.

I’d bet that every time they hear of an LGBT person beaten, bashed, tortured, murdered, they are saying praises and glory to gwd among themselves.

F

May 27th, 2010

van Zeller: Some people would even say it was written by some religious leaders such as Martin Ssempa.

Lively: I don’t think he wrote it. I think it was”

“It was not clear who wrote the draft legislation, the committee’s report says, noting that the document had “technical defects in form and content’.”
http://www.monitor.co.ug/News/National/-/688334/914088/-/wyk5y9/-/index.html

Too bad the reporter didn’t ask Lively whether he’s the one who wrote the bill. He has a law degree.

Lynn David

May 27th, 2010

What is it with investigative reporters anymore that they cannot ask the obvious question when a guy makes a baldface statement claiming Euro-American gay activists are ‘doing something’ to Uganda? Why do they allow these lies to go unchallenged?

It’s amazing a man like Lively who puports to be a ‘true American’ can go around supporting a bill that denies constitutionally protected freedom of speech (in Uganda as well as America) to anyone.

John Doucette

May 28th, 2010

He’s doing nothing more than covering his own butt, or trying to.

F

May 29th, 2010

“van Zeller: Some people would even say it was written by some religious leaders such as Martin Ssempa.

Lively: I don’t think he wrote it. I think it was”

No, according to Rev Kapya Kaoma, it actually was Lively himself who wrote at least parts of the bill, in the sense that the draft included full paragraphs from Lively’s apeech:

“Lively gave a speech at the seminar and Langa simply repeated it word for word in helping to compile the bill. As a result – the first draft included full paragraphs of Scott Lively’s work.”
http://observers.france24.com/en/content/20091215-anti-gay-bill-inspired-american-pastors-uganda-stephen-langa-scott-lively

If this is true, I can only imagine what proudly anti-colonialist Ugandans —who fume and rant about the arrogant colonialism of human rights advocates, the unAfricanness of gays and the racism of those who claim that the whole thing was instigated by US Evangeligals— I can only imagine what they would say if they found out that the Anti-Homosexuality Bill that they claim shows Uganda’s moral “leadership” and superiority was written at least indirectly and in part by a wealthy, white American conspiracy theorist, most likely in Sacramento?

nikko

May 29th, 2010

What a vile, evil, deluded man. So smug I’d love to rip his head off.

Jason Ingram

July 15th, 2010

Here is the link to the whole program:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lo77w_71hA0&has_verified=1

I am outraged, confused and wondering what action I should take. I remember a decade ago watching a Christian documentary about Uganda becoming a Christian nation and how excited I was. Little did I know things would come to this.

It seems more to me that American conservative culture and ideas really is to blame for this.

Phil

March 3rd, 2011

As a Catholic I’m not keen on Lively and the way he goes about his business. But I will say this. Re the gay origins of Nazism all he did was collate and present sources already in existence. He provided no new evidence of his own.

If you object to people like Lively identifying gays with Nazism then spare a thought for the Christians who are offended by gay attempts to present Jesus and The Apostles as homosexuals.

I don’t believe in custodial sentences for being homosexual other than for offences involving sexual assault but I am utterly to homosexual marriage and child adoption.

Phil

March 3rd, 2011

correction to final paragraph….

I don’t believe in custodial sentences for being homosexual other than for offences involving sexual assault but I am utterly opposed to homosexual marriage and child adoption.

Timothy Kincaid

March 4th, 2011

Phil,

You are wrong. Lively twisted data, made up “facts”, excluded those that contradicted his presumptions, and made a mockery of historical research.

I once perused a website that did a page by page, paragraph by paragraph, debunking of his lies. It was amazing the extent to which he had to dismiss mountains of evidence and cling to the most tentative of speculations in order to come to his conclusions.

But more compelling than that is the fact that absolutely no historians – especially those who focus either on the Holocaust or on 1930’s Germany – agree with Lively.

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