Posts Tagged As: Scott Lively

Bryan Fischer Cheers Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality BIll

Jim Burroway

November 25th, 2012

And he’s having “the Father of the Ugandan Homosexual Movement” — whatever that means — on his show tomorrow. We can expect that Lively will likely endorse Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill, especially now that there are unconfirmed rumors that the death penalty will be removed. (Don’t believe those rumors until you see it in writing. They’ve tried to pull that lie many, many times before, and Lively was happy to play along.)

Scott Lively Mulls Run for Massachusetts Governor

Jim Burroway

November 14th, 2012

He tried this before, but it didn’t work out so well. So he’s trying again. Seriously.

Pastor Scott Lively of Springfield today announced the formation of a committee to explore the possibility of a run for the governorship of Massachusetts.  A fifth generation Bay Stater, born and raised in the Village of Shelburne Falls, Pastor Lively was for many years a Christian missionary and social activist in various parts of the world, based primarily in Oregon and California.  In 2008, following a year-long speaking tour through eight countries of the former Soviet Union, he and his wife Anne moved back to Massachusetts to start a mission to the poor and disadvantaged in inner-city Springfield.  They bought a home in the heart of the troubled McNight neighborhood and opened a church and ministry center called Holy Grounds Coffee House, strategically located on State Street between the Downtown and Mason Square areas, to serve the homeless and street populations of the city.

…Pastor Lively is an internationally recognized authority on biblical values in public policy, serving as an educator, trainer and consultant to church, community and government leaders in more than 30 countries, and as a media figure in more than 700 radio and television interviews here at home.  He is known as the “Father of the Ugandan Homosexual Movement” for his work in that country, and his efforts in Russia, Eastern Europe and the Baltics have strengthened both the Christian church and social resistance to the homosexualization of those regions. [Emphasis added].

I am officially speechless.

Update: He has now updated his faux-pas into something equally paternalistic: “He is known as the “Father of the Ugandan Pro-Family Movement” for his work in that country…” Still speechless.

Scott Lively Reacts

Jim Burroway

November 7th, 2012

The apocalypse is near:

It’s official, the 2012 presidential election is over and we Americans decided not to downshift into Republican. Instead its now full speed ahead toward the progressive’s Godless Utopian fantasy (aka “the cliff”) with Mr. Obama and the Evil Party.

The good news is that we can all stop pretending that Mitt Romney is a conservative. The bad news is that the Stupid Party will, of course, interpret their loss as a sign they were too conservative and move further to the left. The better or worse news (depending on your theology) is that the age of apostasy is more clearly upon us, which means that the return of Christ is drawing near. These next few months and years will be an exciting time for students of prophesy, and an exceedingly challenging time for all believers as the stand for biblical truth becomes more and more costly.

Scott Lively: Moral Relativist

Rob Tisinai

August 13th, 2012

Purported historian David Barton has not had a good week.  His NYT bestseller, The Jefferson Lies (which presents Jefferson as more of an orthodox Christian than evil secular historians would have you believe), has been pulled by its publisher, which “lost confidence” in the book after a host of historians — including many conservative Christians — pointed out its abundant flaws.

Barton has a few champions left. One of them — Scott Lively, author of The Pink Swastika — may be familiar to you, and he offers the most hilarious defense of all:

The whole thing is a gay conspiracy. And you (yes, you) are involved.

Lively points out that Warren Throckmorton is one of Barton’s harshest critics. Throckmorton is a professor at a Christian university who has made a fascinating journey when it comes to his views on homosexuality. I doubt he would describe himself as pro-gay, but his steady and determined search for what is true has led him to speak out for the dignity and humanity of LGBT folk.

That’s enough for Lively:  Throckmorton is a villain. And if you don’t think so…

just do a search of his name on the websites of the nastiest of these anti-Christ blogs such as Box Turtle Bulletin [!], Truth Wins Out and Joe My God. You will find that Throckmorton is a hero to these people and apparently a willing collaborator with some of them.

See, if gays admire Throckmorton, then Throckmorton must be bad — and therefore, David Barton must be good. Seriously, that’s the crux of Lively’s 1500-word analysis. And nowhere in those 1500 words does he actually debunk a single criticism against the Barton. In fact, Lively suggests that minor issues like accuracy and truth are of secondary importance:

To put all of this in a proper perspective, lets assume for the sake of argument that every criticism of every critic is accurate and not merely a question of different takes on the underlying facts and context (as I believe). Lets even go further and allow solely for argument’s sake that David Barton exaggerated some of the facts. [Note Lively’s distortion:  to say that Barton “exaggerated some of the facts” is not to “go further” than Barton’s critics, who actually went quite further than that — but Lively is quite deft at sneaking in this lie.] Is the attack on the man in proportion to his perceived fault? For the sake of preventing further damage to our already fractured Christian unity in this dominant humanist culture couldn’t this have been handled more prudently? Or is David Barton’s entire career being destroyed and all of his years of working tirelessly to advance the cause of Christ in American society being retroactively invalidated on purpose by a puppet-master with a hidden motive?

Who exactly benefits from this? If you listen hard you can hear their gleeful cackles as they pat Warren Throckmorton on the back.

Scott Lively provides us with some insight here — not into the working of the vast gay conspiracy, but into his own head. Lots of people are delighted by this setback to Barton and his alternative reality; gays are just a small subset of that population, and a minor one at that. But if you’re as obsessed with homosexuality as Lively is, then anything with a remote and tenuous connection to the gays must be all about the gays. Poor guy.

Really, though, I adore this piece by Lively. Rarely have I seen such a direct and blatant statement that something so trivial as the truth must never get in the way of what is, um, right. It’s nice to have stuff like that from our opponents out in the open, stuff we later outrage them with by quoting it verbatim. Nicely done, Scott.

Now excuse me while I go practice my cackle.

OKC’s Draper Park Christian Church Invites Holocaust Revisionist To Speak

Jim Burroway

April 24th, 2012

Scott Lively, whose Abiding Truth Ministry is an official SPLC-certified hate group, has been invited by the pastor of Draper Park Christian Church to preach to the congregation on April 27-29. Lively is the author of The Pink Swastika, now in it’s fourth edition, in which he claims that “homosexuals invented and ran the Nazi Party.” It’s unlikely that the unsuspecting members of Draper Park Christian Church are aware of what is in store for them this weekend. To help prepare them for what’s coming, I think it’s important to lay out explicitly what Lively teachers, including:

(P 32) It was no coincidence that homosexuals were among those who founded the Nazi Party.  In fact, the party grew out of a number of groups in Germany which were centers of homosexual activity and activism.  Many of the characteristic rituals, symbols, activities and philosophies we associate with Nazism came from these organizations or from contemporary homosexuals.

(P 36) Famous events in Nazi history are also linked to homosexuality; events such as the burning of the German Reichstag in 1932, the 1938 pogrom called Kristallnacht, and the 1944 attempt on Hitler’s life.  Even the enduring image of Nazi book-burning, familiar to us from newsreels of the 1930s, was directly related to the homosexuality of Nazi leaders.

He claims that the Nazi’s hatred of Jews came from German homosexual’s “hatred” of Judeo-Christian values:

(P 100): As we seek to understand Nazism, it is important to remember that Judaism and its Christian and Islamic offshoots are fundamentally opposed to homosexuality.  As we begin to grasp the relationship between homosexuality and occultism on one hand, and between homosexuals and Nazism on the other, the hatred of the Nazis for Jews and Christians may be more easily explained.  The Jews were the people responsible for the demise of pagan world domination.  Their theology (especially in its Christian form) banished pagan practices, including homosexuality, to a hidden and often reviled subculture.  This is not to say that anti-Semitism is strictly a result of occult or homosexual influences.  But at its very root there is a spiritual element to the Holocaust that suggests that it was, in some respects, vengeance against the people whose moral laws had relegated pagan sex-religions to obscurity and ignominy.

As for the German gays who themselves were sent to concentration camps, Lively has an answer for that: it’s the result of a war between “butches” and “fems”:

(P43-44) This, then, is the explanation for the paradox of the Nazi persecution of homosexuals.  It is found in the history of two irreconcilable philosophies linked by a common sexual dysfunction.  The  roots of this conflict extend back into the eighteenth century and span a 70-year period which saw the rise of homosexual militancy in the movement that gave Nazism to the world.

According to Lively, Nazism may have been vanquished in World War II, but violent fascism remains the inevitable result of gay people being treated as equals in society:

(P275) One of the symbols with which homosexuals in the United States have chosen to represent their movement is the phoenix, a mythical bird that was said to burn itself on a funeral pyre every five hundred years and then rise from the ashes more majestic than before (Alyson Almanac:56).  A more apt symbol for the historic cycle of homo-fascism and resulting social chaos would be hard to find.  From the ashes of Nazi Germany, the homo-fascist phoenix has arisen again — this time in the United States.

(P297-298) …(H)omo-fascism did not die with Adolf Hitler. It lives on in the neo-Nazi movement and in “gay” culture itself. Clearly, actual Nazis exist today as a radical fringe of society with no real power to threaten civilization. This would be a comforting realization if we presumed that Nazism was itself the source of the evil that threatened to engulf the world and was not merely the product of a deeper and still-enduring social problem. Our thesis, however, is that Nazism was the consequence of Germany’s abandonment of Judeo-Christian morality and that the primary sponsors of its transformation were homosexuals.

Lively claims that what happened in Germany is inevitable to happen in America, in some form or fashion, if equality for LGBT people is enshrined in law.

(P299-300) If the rise of Nazism in Germany was made possible, at least in part, by the homosexualization of German society, what does this bode for America as we watch the steady advance of the “gay” agenda in this culture? Should we expect to witness something like the rise of a Third Reich on American soil? Or would the effect on American society be of an entirely different character? Is the “gay” movement in the United States sufficiently similar to its German counterpart as even to warrant concern? (Certainly the German “gay” culture was far more militaristic than the homosexual movement here, for example). Or is this the wrong question? Is there something about homosexuality (or the broader problem of sexual libertinism) that inevitably destroys the society that embraces it?

…We know that the implicit goal of homosexual political activism is to legitimize homosexual conduct and relationships in a society. This necessarily requires a society to abandon its commitment to marriage as the exclusive domain of acceptable sexual conduct. The abandonment of this standard logically opens the door to every other form of sexual promiscuity. Clearly, such a transformation of attitude is now occurring in America.  What we will find is that this transformation is not the result of random social forces, but of deliberate and systematic political activism by the “gay”  movement.

He has even tried to tied homosexuality to the 9/11 terror attacks:

(P269) We turn next to the relationship between the Nazi regime and the Islamist terror groups which share its militarism and its anti-Semitism. …Islamist terrorism has become an issue of great interest since the attacks of September 11th, 2001, against the United States. Interestingly, the leaders of the nineteen terrorists, including ringleader Mohamed Atta, have been reported to be homosexuals.  ..

This is just a taste of what Lively is likely to preach this weekend at Draper Park. He shared many of these themes during other talks that he has given, including his infamous self-described “Nuclear Bomb” that he dropped in Kampala, Uganda in 2009. It was there where he said that gay men were the “kind of monsters” who would operate Nazi Germany’s gas chambers, and he added the Rwandan Genocide to his list of crimes he holds gay people responsible for. Within days, there were marches in the streets calling for the round-up of gay people and “strengthening” that nation’s laws against homosexuality. By the end of the year, there was a proposal before Uganda’s Parliament to kill gay people, and criminalize virtually everyone else, including family and friends, who had any connection with them.

Draper Park appears to have some sort of connection with First Stone Ministries, an Exodus-affiliated ex-gay ministry under the leadership of Stephen Black. It’s unclear what role he plays in this, but this wall post on Draper Park’s facebook page “thanks Stephen Black of First Stone Ministries” while pointing to an article put out by MassResistance (another SPLC-certified hate group,) about Lively, an “upcoming DPCC keynote speaker.” Exodus International president Alan Chambers quickly moved to disassociate his organization from the upcoming event:

We have learned that Scott Lively is slated to speak on April 27-29 at Draper Park Christian Church, a location where Exodus International held a regional conference in 2009. We want to say clearly and without question that Exodus International has no connection to this event. Furthermore, due to our vast differences with Mr. Lively’s viewpoints, including his stance on the criminalization of homosexuality, we will not participate in, support or promote any event involving Mr. Lively.

Lively has managed to do something no one else has: He has united unusual coalition among Oklahoma City pastors who oppose his message, including some who also oppose gay rights. Wayne Besen has those details, which include a press conference on Thursday, and a live broadcast of Oklahoma: Inside Out Friday evening devoted to Lively’s appearance.

What’s the Downside of Same-Sex Marriage?

Jim Burroway

April 17th, 2012

Scott Lively’s answer: “Fire and brimstone raining from heaven.”

And it all goes down hill from there.

By the way, blogs around the Internets exploded with reports that someone reportedly shouted, “we will not be silenced by faggots” at the Tea Party rally held on Boston Common, Those reports relied on one lone Tweet as a source, which is why I was reluctant to pick it up and repeat it. Good thing, because in this video at about the 11:00 mark, you can clearly hear Lively shout to the protesters, “We will not be silenced by fascists! We will not be silenced by fascists! Crawl back into your holes!” Not sure that that was any better.

[Via Boston Oberver.]

Counter-Protests Overshadow Boston Tea Party Rally

Jim Burroway

April 16th, 2012

The last thing you want is for the counter-protesters’ arrests and reports of “rushing the stage” to become the main story to emerge from an anti-gay rally, as that only serves to feed the persecution complex of anti-gay extremists. The only other story to compete with that meme is that of a photo that was posted on Flickr showing a Boston police officer’s hands around a protester’s neck. Criticism of the Boston police’s handling of the Tea Party rally prompted a statement from a department spokesperson saying that they would investigate, but that due to “the aggressive nature” of the protests (the short statement used the word “aggressive” twice) the department “supports the arrests made by the officers today.” The man in the photo was reportedly not among those arrested.

According to the narrative from Boston’s primary news outlets, those appear to be the main stories behind yesterday’s Mass Tea Party Rally held on Boston Common which featured Scott Lively of Abiding Truth Ministries an SPLC-certified hate group, and Brian Camenker of MassResistance, another certified anti-gay hate group.

Turning back to the rally itself, it’s very difficult to learn exactly what was said there. MassResistance posted a headline saying, “Mob of homosexual activists overrun & nearly shut down Boston Common Tea Party event as police look on and do nothing.” But if the The Boston Globe and local television reports are any indication, it appears that the rally was neither overrun nor “nearly shut down,” nor that the police “did nothing” amid those reports of arrests and apparent abuse. Online accounts of what Lively or Camenker said are sparse. One is from Mike Ball:

Photo by Mike Ball

Lively came on at the very end to give a benediction. Of course, given his self-righteous bent, it wasn’t a blessing at all. It was the eternal-damnation version of Deuteronomy 30. His went beyond the “I have set before you live and death; therefore choose life.” It was if you warn someone what they have to believe and they don’t do it, they’re going to hell. So there.

Some benediction, Scotto.

During his time, the counter-demonstrators kept up their yelling, calling him a murderer, in allusions to his Ugandan politicking. They did shout him down.

Photo sent to me from Matthew Murphy, who is shown holding the sign.

Ball said that turnout for the rally on Boston Common was rather small, perhaps about 100 people. About 40 more were counter-protesters. Another account, from Join The Impact MA, puts the number of counter-protests at 20, but they were joined by “100 exuberant protestors from the Occupy movement (who) charged onto the scene.” According to that account:

The din became an uproar as Lively took the microphone. In his speech, Lively blasted conservatives who would minimize the importance of social issues. Then he denounced LGBT rights activists as “fascists” who were intent on destroying civilization. Camenker met with similar pushback as he criticized the work of GLSEN for allegedly promoting homosexual recruitment of public school students—in reference to the group’s efforts to prevent anti-LGBT bullying. Lively and Camenker were loudly booed, and much of their speech-making was drowned out by Occupy chants and “mic check” counterpoint.

Not all counter-protestors joined the chanting. I (Join the Impact MA’s Don Gorton) argued that Lively and Camenker should be allowed to speak, both out of respect for freedom of expression and because they tend to discredit the opposition to LGBT equality when their extremist views are publicized. Yet the passions these two hate group leaders stir are difficult to contain. Tea Party organizers learned that giving a platform to anti-gay bigotry effectively drowns out any other message they may seek to propagate. The Boston Police kept the peace while allowing everyone an opportunity to be heard. By the time anti-government activist Carla Howell took the podium after Camenker, most of the “tea party” attendees had frittered away, the momentum of the rally dissipated.

The Daily Agenda for Sunday, April 15

Jim Burroway

April 15th, 2012

TODAY’S AGENDA (THEIRS):
Family “Research” Council’s Values Bus Tour: Westlake and Cuyahoga Falls, OH. The Family “Research” Council, an SPLC-certified hate group, continues its Values Bus Tour of Ohio. Today, the tour goes to the Cleveland suburb of Westlake for morning services at Church on the Rise. The bus will be there from 9:00 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. The bus then departs for an Akron Tea Party “Rescue America Tax Day Rally” at Fall River Square in Cuyahoga Falls. That rally features “Joe the Plumber” (Samuel Wurzelbacher, who is running for Congress to represent the heavily gerrymandered district that stretches from Toledo nearly to Cleveland) and Rep. Jim Renacci (R-OH). That rally goes from 3:00 to 6:00 p.m.

Scott Livley, Brian Camenker, Don Feder Speak at Tea Party Rally: Boston, MA. The SPLC’s list of anti-gay hate groups will be well represented at today’s Patriots’ Day Rally on Boston Commons today, sponsored by the Massachusetts Tea Party. MassResistance’s Brian Camenker and Abiding Truth Ministry’s Scott Lively, and Don Feder (who once described himself as making Atilla the Hunn look like a “a limousine liberal”) are listed as featured speakers. The keynote speaker will be Texas GOP Congressman (and LaBarbara Award winner) Louie Gohmert. Former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnston had been on the bill as another keynote speaker, but he withdrew on Thursday after learning about Scott Lively’s participation. Johnson will be at a competing Worcester Tea Party rally instead. The Boston rally will soil the Boston Common Bandstand from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m.

TODAY’S AGENDA (OURS):
Protest of FRC Values Bus: Westlake and Cuyahoga Falls, OH. GetEqual Ohio and Freedom To Marry Ohio will meet that FRC Values Bus events today with counter-rallies at both locations. The first one at Westlake will take place in front of Church on the Rise, and will go from 8:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. The second counter-rally will take in Cuyahoga Falls at Fall River Square from 3:00 to 6:00 p.m.

Pride Celebrations Today: Łódź, Poland; Miami Beach, FL; Piteå, Sweden

AIDS Walks Today: Honolulu, HI and New Haven, CT.

Other Events Today: Women’s Fest 2012, Camp Rehoboth, DE and Scandinavian Ski Pride, Hemsedal Norway.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
Leonardo Da Vinci: 1452.
Born in Vinci “at the third hour of the night,” Leonardo was apprenticed to the artist Andrea del Verrocchio in Florence at the age of fourteen. Early descriptions indicate that he was tall (at least 5’8″), athletic and extremely handsome. One contemporary described him as “an artist of outstanding physical beauty who displayed infinite grace in everything he did.” At the age of twenty-four, Da Vinci was among four people accused of sodomy, a very serious accusation because it carried the death penalty. Those charges were dismissed on the condition that there were no further accusations. When accusations were made again that same year, charges were dismissed again, perhaps because one of those charged may have been linked with the powerful Medici family.

Undoubtedly, those accusations made Da Vinci very cautious, even in Florence where, despite those charges,  homosexuality was somewhat more tolerated than elsewhere (so much so that in Germany, the word Florenzer became slang for homosexual.) While there is no further contemporary mention of Da Vinci’s sexuality, it was generally known that the life-long bachelor was particularly fond of and generous with his handsome male pupils, some of whom may have inspired some of Da Vinci’s erotic sketches. Later historians mostly assumed that he was gay, an assumption that gained greater currency in the nineteenth century when German, French and British authors began examining the new understanding of what was to be called inversion, uranism, and, finally, homosexuality. Whenever nineteenth century authors sought examples of inverts in history, Da Vinci’s name nearly always earned a prominent mention.

Bessie Smith: 1894. “The Empress of the Blues” was born in Chattanooga, the daughter of a laborer and part-time Baptist preacher. He died before she could remember him, and by the time she was nine, she had lost her mother and a brother. Her older brother had joined a Black Vaudeville troupe owned by Moses Stokes, which featured Ma Rainey as blues singer. In 1912, Bessie joined that same troupe, but as a dancer rather than a singer. While it’s believed that Rainey didn’t teach Smith to sing, (Smith had been singing on the streets of Chattanooga from a very young age), Rainey is credited with teaching Smith about stage presence. By 1913, Smith began singing professionally, and her career exploded in 1923 when she began recording for Columbia Records. By then, she was the highest-paid African-American entertainer in her day.

In 1923, she entered a very stormy marriage with Jack Gee, but he was unable to accommodate her show-biz life or her open bisexuality. They separated but never officially divorced. Meanwhile, she recorded hit after hit for Columbia, including “Downhearted Blues,” “St. Louis Blues”, “Empty Bed Blues,” and the tune she is perhaps best known for today, “Gimme a Pigfoot (And a Bottle of Beer).” By the end of the 1920’s, the arrival of the “talkies” meant the end of vaudeville, while the onset of the Great Depression brought about a collapse of the recording industry. Smith continued touring in clubs, but the going was tough. By 1933, she was recording for Okeh records, where she was paid a non-royalty fee of $37.50 for each side. Those were her last recordings. She was critically injured in a car accident in 1937, her right arm nearly severed in the accident. She died the following morning at the G.T. Thomas Afro-American Hospital in Clarksdale, Mississippi. Her funeral in Philadelphia drew 10,000 mourners. Her grave however remained unmarked; her estranged husband kept pocketing the money raised for a tombstone. She finally got her marker in 1970, courtesy of Janis Joplin.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Who6fTHJ34

George Platt Lynes: 1907. He first wanted to start a literary career after meeting Gertrude Stein and her circle in Paris. In 1927, he opened a bookstore in Englewood, New Jersey and took up photography so he could take pictures of his friends, and that is where his creative energies went. By 1932 Lynes opened his photography studio in New York and began exhibiting in the city’s art galleries. He earned commissions from the New York City Ballet, Saks Fifth Avenue, and Bergdorf Goodmans. After World War II, he moved to Hollywood, where he became chief photographer for Vogue and photographed such illuminaries as Katharine Hepburn, Gloria SWanson, Igor Stravinsky, and Thomas Mann. His work was an artistic success, but a financial failure. He moved back to New York, but was never able to re-establish the success he once had.

The passion he had for his photography can be best seen in the photos that he took which harkened back to his reason for taking up photography in the first place: intimate (usually nude) photos of friends, lovers, performers and models. The artist Paul Cadmus, who posed for Lynes, recalled how he “used flattery to make everyone feel so comfortable.” Those male nudes were never published, at least not in his lifetime. In the late 1940s, he transfered many of his negatives to Dr. Alfred Kinsey’s Institute for Sexual Research in Bloomington, Indiana, and destroyed much of the rest of his work just before dying of lung cancer in 1955. In 2011, Rizolli published George Platt Lynes: The Male Nudes, marking the first time many of his beloved nudes appeared in print.

If you know of something that belongs on the agenda, please send it here. Don’t forget to include the basics: who, what, when, where, and URL (if available).

And feel free to consider this your open thread for the day. What’s happening in your world?

Lively Responds to Lawsuit

Jim Burroway

March 15th, 2012

Scott Lively yesterday responded to the lawsuit filed in Federal District Court by Sexual Minorities Uganda alleging that Lively engaged in a decade-long effort to help plan and encourage the persecution of LGBT people in Uganda in violation of international law. Lively defends his actions as the simple exercise of his freedom of speech, telling The New York Times, “”That’s about as ridiculous as it gets. I’ve never done anything in Uganda except preach the Gospel and speak my opinion about the homosexual issue.” He also told Bob Unruh at World Net Daily:

I am an American citizen [being targeted] over the persecution of homosexuals as they define it as a crime against humanity – for speaking the truth of the Bible in a foreign country,” Scott Lively, of Abiding Truth Ministries, told WND today after he found out about the legal action.

Warren Throckmorton responded to that rather quickly:

Where does the Bible say that homosexuality is responsible for the Holocaust? For the Rwandan genocide? That gays are pedophiles? Are those Biblically based beliefs?

Warren also notes that Exodus International board member Don Scmmierer and International Healing Foundation’s Caleb Lee Brundidge also spoke at that 2009 conference, but neither of them are named in this lawsuit.

Lively also told World Net Daily:

“Frankly, I don’t this is actionable,” Lively told WND. “They make it clear that this suit is … premised on speeches or writings.

“I spoke to members of parliament in their assembly hall, and advised them to focus on therapy and not punishment [for homosexuality],” he said.

“What they’re suggesting here is that the duly elected legislative representatives of Uganda, the cream of Ugandan society, cannot be responsible for their own [legislative] actions – that they adopted legislation because a white evangelical came and said something to them,” he said.

Casting this in racial terms is desperate. The complaint also notes that Lively has traveled to Moldova, Russia and Latvia with similar goals. The measure if his influence in those areas are mixed. Frank Mugisha, Executive Director of Sexual Minorities Uganda, notes that there was a clear difference in the atmosphere for LGBT people in Uganda after 2009 when compared to the time before that fateful 2009 conference.

Lively’s strongest argument so far however is his contention that “this suit is … premised on speeches or writing.” The Center for Constitutional Rights senior staff attorney Pam Spees emphasized that the suit is not about his speeches or beliefs, but about a series of planning meetings that took place since 2002 that reached its fruition in the events of 2009. “He was the go-to guy,” she told reporters in a conference call, “the man with the plan.” The challenge in court will be for CCR to provide enough evidence to support their contention of that plan to keep the lawsuit away from being solely about Lively’s speech and beliefs.

While speech alone cannot be the sole basis for this lawsuit (It would, and should, be thrown out immediately if it is), I can envision that Lively’s speeches can be a major part of the evidence presented. Since Lively opened the subject of the Rwandan genocide during his talk in Kampala in 2009, let me return to those events as an example. As the Hutu militias were engaged in a bloodthursty orgy of murder and mayhem in 1994, they were urged on by radio announcers broadcasting anti-Tutsi propaganda, complete with announcements of which Tutu’s live where so that mobs could find them. Were the radio announcers simply exercising free speech? Or were they accomplices in crimes against humanity? International law sides with the latter.

When Lively appeared on Ugandan media, he too broadcast his own virulent brand of anti-gay propaganda, although he didn’t call out people by name and address and urge that they be hunted down. His friends did that instead. Mercifully, Uganda did not slide into genocide, although the proposal before Uganda’s Parliament, if enacted into law, would result in a state-sanctioned outcome that would be remarkably similar. (Lively disavows the proposed death penalty, although he struggled with it a while before finally deciding that it was not something that he would support.) The real question, then, is what specific role did Lively play, in addition to his public talks, which led to the events of 2009? That is CCR’s challenge before the court.

Finally, Lively also had this response for the Associated Press:

“Most of the ostensibly inflammatory comments attributed to me are from selectively edited video clips of my 2009 seminars in Kampala,” he said. “I challenge the plaintiffs and their allies to publish the complete footage of the seminar on the Internet. They will not do this or their duplicity would be exposed.”

It’s my understanding that the Kampala-based Family Life Network, who sponsored the 2009 conference, owns the copyright to the video. While it is legal to publish excerpts of the video under the “fair use” clauses of U.S. copyright law, it would be illegal for anyone who is not the copyright owner to post the entire video. Why hasn’t Stephen Langa’s Family Life Network published the video? Who knows. It’s theirs to do as they wish. But by not publishing it, they leave the door open for Lively to complain about “selectively edited clips.”

Lawsuit Filed Against Scott Lively For Instigating Anti-LGBT Persecution in Uganda

Jim Burroway

March 14th, 2012

L-R: Unidentified woman, American holocaust revisionist Scott Lively, International Healing Foundation’s Caleb Brundidge, Exodus International boardmember Don Schmierer, Family Life Network (Uganda)’s Stephen Langa, at the time of the March 2009 anti-gay conference in Uganda.

The Center for Constitutional Rights has announced this morning that they are filing a lawsuit on behalf of Sexual Minorities of Uganda (SMUG) against American anti-gay extremist Scott Lively for his role in “the decade-long campaign he has waged, in coordination with his Ugandan counterparts, to persecute persons on the basis of their gender and/or sexual orientation and gender identity.” CCR announced its action this morning in a conference call with reporters. I was among those participating in the call.

The complaint (PDF: 2.2MB/47 pages) was filed in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts at Springfield, where Lively currently resides. CCR is bringing the suit under the Alien Tort Statute, which provides federal jurisdiction for “any civil action by an alien, for a tort only, committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States.” In other words, it allows a foreign national to sue in U.S. courts for violations of U.S. or international law conducted by U.S. citizens overseas. According to CCR, the U.S. Supreme Court has affirmed that ATS is a remedy for serious violations of international law norms that are “widely accepted and clearly defined.”

The crime against humanity in international law that CCR alleges that Lively violated is the crime of persecution, which is defined as the “intentional and severe deprivation of fundamental rights contrary to international law by reason of the identity of the group or collectivity.” CCR alleges that the defendant plaintif, Sexual Minorities Uganda, as well as individual staff members and member organizations, suffered severe deprivations of fundamental rights as a direct result of a coordinated campaign “largely initiated, instigated and directed” by Scott Lively.

In a conference call with reporters, CCR Senior Staff Attorney Pam Spees said that the Alien Tort Statute act had been applied in other specific cases of human rights violations against individuals. But she acknowledged that if this case prevails, it would establish a precedent for applying it to the crime of persecution, which, as a crime against a group, is different from a general “ordering the killing of people in his custody.” She pointed out U.S. asylum cases have acknowledged sexual orientation and gender identity and expression as legitimate claims for persecution.

Lively is best known for his role, reported first here on BTB, as featured speaker at an anti-gay conference held in Kampala in March 2009. During that conference, Lively touted his book, The Pink Swastika, in which he claimed that gays were responsible for founding the Nazi Party and running the gas chambers in the Holocaust. Lively then went on to blame the Rwandan genocide on gay men and he charged that gay people were flooding into Uganda from the West to recruit children into homosexuality via child sexual molestation.

During that same trip, Lively met with several members of Uganda’s Parliament. Only two weeks later, there were already rumors that Parliament was drafting a new law that “will be tough on homosexuals.” That new law, in its final form, would be introduced into Parliament later in October. Meanwhile, the public panic stoked by the March conference led to follow-up meetings, a march on Parliament, and a massive vigilante campaign waged on radio and the tabloid press. Lively would later boast that his March 2009 talk was a “nuclear bomb against the gay agenda in Uganda.”

In the complaint filed in Federal District Court, CCR provides details of Lively’s activities in Uganda going back to 2002, when Lively began touring Uganda and establishing contacts with leading Ugandan figures, including Stephen Langa (who organized the March 2009 conference) and Pentecostal pastor Martin Ssempa. While there, he was interviewed for major daily newspapers and appeared on radio and television. In a conference call with reporters, Spees said that Lively’s particular influence on Uganda’s religious leaders was the primary avenue for “telegraphing the sense of terror” through his accusations against the gay community, and that influence picked up significantly following the 2009 conference. The complaint includes several examples where Lively’s rhetoric showed up virtually verbatim in statements from Ugandan religious and political leaders. She also pointed out that the preamble of the bill’s original draft included language that was lifted straight out of conference materials.

Tarso Luís Ramos, Executive Director of Political Research Associates, echoed Spees’s assertion that Lively’s influence played a major role in the growing climate of persecution in Uganda. He described the main avenue of influence as from religious leaders like Lively to prominent Ugandan religious leaders who also wield considerable moral and political influence. Ramons said that during Lively’s 2009 trip to Uganda, he also met with members of the Ugandan Christian Lawyers Association and members of Parliament, and spoke at an assembly of 5,000 college students and at major pentecostal churches. According to the complaint, M.P. David Bahati, author of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill, was among those who attended the Kampala conference. Bahati and former Ethics and Integrity Minister James Nsaba Buturo were also named as co-conspirators in the complaint.

Ramos and Spees contrasted Lively’s role with that of the secretive U.S. organization known as The Family or The Fellowship. Spees described Lively as the “go-to guy whose rhetoric went into hyperspace to stamp out” LGBT people “in a strategic way.” She alleged that he provided a “tangible, clear plan” in contrast to The Family, which tried to distance itself from the bill. One  part of the “clear plan” outlined in the complaint was Lively’s recommendation for the criminalization of LGBT advocacy in Uganda. That recommendation became Clause 13 in the Anti-Homosexuality Bill.

Spees emphasized that while Lively’s “violent anti-gay rhetoric” forms a basis for the evidence of the complaint, the case is not about hate speech but what she described as his systematic efforts to provoke persecution in Uganda and elsewhere. She described Lively as a “key player in persecution” in a concerted effort to deprive and remove rights for LGBT Ugandans.

Speaking via telephone form Uganda, SMUG Executive Director Frank Mugisha welcomed the filing. He said that when the March 2009 Kampala conference was announced, they had no idea how far that conference’s influence would go. Before 2009, he described an atmosphere where people were somewhat freer to live in groups as gay people, but after the conference there were demonstrations, meetings, reports of arrests, people being thrown out of their houses and churches, beatings, and severe curbs on freedom of assembly. Just last month, Ugandan authorities raided a meeting by LGBT leaders at a hotel in Entebbe and tried to arrest Kasha Jacqueline Nabagese, founder of the lesbian rights group Freedom and Roam Uganda.

More information about the lawsuit against Lively can be found at the CCR web site.

Update: The New York Times has this reaction from Lively:

Reached by telephone in Springfield, Mass., where he now runs “Holy Grounds Coffee House,” a storefront mission and coffee shop, Mr. Lively said he had not been served and did not know about the lawsuit. However, he said: “That’s about as ridiculous as it gets. I’ve never done anything in Uganda except preach the Gospel and speak my opinion about the homosexual issue. There’s actually no grounds for litigation on this.”

The Daily Agenda for Sunday, January 15

Jim Burroway

January 15th, 2012

John S. Torell and Scott Lively

TODAY’S AGENDA (Theirs):
Scott Lively Webcast On “The Global Threat of Homosexuality”. The Resurrection Life of Jesus Church in Carmichael, CA, is run by a guy by the name of Pastor John S. Torell, who says he is the founder and president of European-American Evangelistic Crusades, Inc. Torell is something of a conspiracy theory connoisseur, with things to say about the Bilderbergers, the Jews and the New World Order. On the plane crash that killed Polish President Lech Kaczynski, Torell wrote, “Whenever politicians die ‘accidentally’, it’s worthwhile to see if the deceased politicians had been doing anything that may have angered the Jews or the New World Order, which in Europe takes the form of the European Union (EU).” He says the Jews, which runs the Secret World Government, hates the Tea Party. As for the Occupy Wall Street Movement, it is the product of a conspiracy involving Estonian-born Kalle Lasn, Barack Obama, ACORN, North Korea, the American Nazi Party, the Communist Party, Iranian Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamene, Venezuela president Hugo Chavez, and Roseanne Barr (who is, in case you missed it, a Jew who was born in the Mormon capital of Salt Lake City).

Also, HIV is manmade, created in “an ultrasecret government project called the Special Virus Program.” Another secret government program, in cooperation with that Jewish-run Secret World Government, is responsible for the earthquakes in Japan and Haiti. As for 9/11, the people who did it aren’t the people you think did it. To find out who did it, you have to watch this video, which I haven’t, so I don’t know who did it. Mormonisms are a cult, United Pentecostals are a cult, Seventh Day Adventism is a cult, Unitarian Universalism is a cult, Catholicism is a big time cult, and Judiasm, in addition to controlling the Secret World Government, is also a cult. And anybody who doesn’t read the King James Bible will probably end up in hell if they’re not careful.

And so it should come as no surprise that the Resurrection Life of Jesus Church will host Scott Lively for a live webcast this morning on the topic of “The Global Threat of Homosexuality.” Lively has traveled the world peddling his own brand of conspiracy theories including these in Uganda in 2009. His main schtick is to claim that Nazism was, in its essence, a gay movement, and that the inevitable result of equality for gay people is violent fascism. In Uganda, he pinned the blame for the genocide in neighboring Rwanda on “super macho” homosexuals. When it comes to paranoia, the aphorism about birds of a feather always springs to mind. The web cast, if you’re interested, begins at 10:30 a.m. PST.

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Ugandan Pro-Gay Pastor To Speak: Washington, D.C. As we noted the past two days, Rev. Mark Kiyimba, pastor of the New Life Kampala Unitarian Universalist Church, is currently on a speaking tour in the U.S., spending this weekend and part of next week in the Washington, D.C. area. He has been a consistent voice for LGBT equality in Uganda. If you have a chance to hear him, you should avail yourself of the opportunity. Here is his schedule:

Celebrations This Weekend: Aspen Gay Ski Week: Aspen, CO; Melbourne Pride’s Midsumma Carnival: Melbourne, VIC.

If you know of something that belongs on the agenda, please send it here. Don’t forget to include the basics: who, what, when, where, and URL (if available).

And feel free to consider this your open thread for the day. What’s happening in your world?

Occupy Hate, a.k.a. Scott Lively

Jim Burroway

November 21st, 2011

A contingent of the Occupy Springfield, Massachusetts, movement took time out to deliver a special message to Scott Lively’s drop-in coffee shop. Lively counters with a bit of preaching of his own.

[via Joe.My.God]

LaBarbera calls (possible) vandalism a “hate crime”

Timothy Kincaid

October 21st, 2011

Peter LaBarbera (who calls himself “Americans for Truth About Homosexuality”) is delighted about the instance of (possible) vandalism experienced by Christian Liberty Academy. He hasn’t had this much attention in years.

Again today the American Family Association’s newsletter gave him an opportunity to get his picture in front of potential donors. And, Pete never loses an opportunity to play a victim of the insidious homosexual agenda (send money). He has been a victim of a hate crime, you see.

Americans for Truth About Homosexuality (AFTAH) founder Peter LaBarbera tells OneNewsNow police are investigating the incident on the basis of vandalism, even though he sees it as a hate crime. Though he is no fan of hate crime laws, LaBarbera wonders if some victims of hate are more important than others.

“It seems that if this were a crime against homosexuals, there would be immediate calls, that this would be prosecuted as a hate crime,” he suggests. “But when Christians are the victims of hate, there’s not much talk about that.”

A hate crime is one that identifies its victims not based on anything that they have personally done, but rather solely because of their identity within a group. It is a crime against a group, intended to intimidate that group, and only incidentally about the individual.

This appears to be the opposite. This is a crime (if it is indeed a crime) directed specifically towards individuals, Scott Lively and Peter LaBarbera. One could even say that the manifesto is devoted to Lively with a few mentions of LaBarbera and is extremely personal in its focus.

So unless Scott Lively is his own social demographic, no hate crime was committed.

Gay vandalism claim likely a hoax

Timothy Kincaid

October 19th, 2011

[Edited to include Point 6, provided by Jim Burroway]

On October 15, someone called “Pissed” posted a statement on the Chicago Independent Media Center website claiming that they had “put two chunks of concrete through the glass windows and doors of the Christian liberty academy” because of the scheduled Americans for Truth fundraiser featuring Scott Lively that evening.

I think it is a hoax.

Now it’s possible that the school was vandalized. It’s even possible that the vandalism was performed by outsiders and not staged for media effect. And if that happened, it’s likely that the vandals were either gay or gay-supportive. But the statement simply isn’t believable.

First off, Peter LaBarbera (who calls himself “Americans for Truth About Homosexuality”) claims that the statement was e-mailed to Christian Liberty Academy, Americans For Truth, Scott Lively and others within a few hours of the event. Those who blog know that this is some pretty quick writing.

Which leaves one of three possible scenarios: 1) the perpetrator of the violence rushed home to write a manifesto, research the details of Lively’s involvement in Uganda, and find the phone numbers and email addresses of a number of individuals; 2) the event was planned in advance with the decision to use strikingly different language in the statement than in a note accompanying the event; or 3) the author of the statement had no need to research the details contained in the statement or the email addresses to whom it should be sent.

I think the third scenario most likely.

After a while you learn the language of gay activists, the language of anti-gay activists, and (more importantly in this case) what anti-gay activists think is how gay people speak. This particular declaration is a combination of standard anti-gay-speak peppered with the phrase “hate group” and a few anecdotes to make it seem like it comes from a gay or gay-supportive individual.

Take, for example, the following paragraph:

In 2009, Lively and other American homophobes spoke at a conference in Uganda called “Exposing the Truth About Homosexuality and the Homosexual Agenda”. This conference stirred the anti-gay atmosphere that already exists in Uganda, a country with laws that punish homosexual acts with up to 14 years in prison. As a direct result of this conference, participants have drafted a bill that, if passed, would increase the sentencing for homosexual acts to life sentences and execution and make it a legal responsibility to report homosexuals in the community. Lively has also co-written a book called “The Pink Swastika” which claims that homosexuals created the Nazi Party and were responsible for the Holocaust, a book that has been repeatedly denounced as inaccurate by historians.

While this might fly with someone who was unaccustomed to reading the rants of those on both sides of the Culture War, this raised red flags with me.

  1. Few gay activists, especially of the ‘throw bricks’ variety, know the name of the Ugandan conference. In fact, here at Box Turtle Bulletin – the source of that source and the most thorough reporter of its detail – we referenced only once that this was the stated theme of the conference.
  2. Note the passivity of the language. Gay activists tend to discuss this event as being primarily driven by the Americans. This takes the opposite stance – they only “spoke at” the conference. (The truth lies in between. The American anti-gay evangelists were not the original organizers, but were the stars of the show. As published American authors with claims of political and religious authority, they were granted the opportunity to speak before the Ugandan Parliament, were treated with deference, and their statements accepted as fact.)
  3. This paragraph depicts the Kill the Gays Bill as being directed solely towards “homosexual acts.” Find me a single gay activist – brick thrower or otherwise – who describes the Ugandan Homosexuality Bill of 2009 in these terms. We rightly note that in Uganda (as in American and everywhere else) bills that target “homosexual acts” in reality target gay people. We know that America’s sodomy laws very seldom resulted in prosecution for actual sodomy but were, rather, the legal basis behind harassment of gay people. The raiding of gay bars, the cruel custody decisions, the military bans and other governmental employment bans, the prohibition of recognition of marriage, and other such official positions were not for the purpose of preventing “homosexual acts” and we don’t pretend that they were. Only those who refuse to recognize the humanity of gay people speak as though anti-gay laws are about “acts”.
  4. One of the more chilling aspects of the Ugandan Kill the Gays Bill (aside from executing gay people) is the requirement that family, neighbors, friends, doctors, ministers, and others report gay people to the government. And that if they fail (or refuse) to do so, they face the threat of years in jail. Scott Lively supports that provision. And I think “a legal responsibility to report homosexuals in the community” is exactly how he would word it.
  5. And look at the mild nature of criticism of the Pink Swastika: “a book that has been repeatedly denounced as inaccurate by historians.” No, it’s not “inaccurate”, it’s historical revisionism at its most insidious and it is denounced by every scholar of the Holocaust as being intentionally dishonest. But to the crowd to whom LaBarbera and Lively appeal, “historians” are ivory tower elitists dedicated to leftist views and therefore immediately suspect.
  6. Who calls gay people “homosexuals” anymore? That right there is a red flag. This “manifesto” uses the word “homosexuals” as a noun for gay people. Gay people or people purporting to support gay rights NEVER call gay people “homosexuals.” /li>

And that’s just one paragraph. Other language in the article feels more at home within the anti-gay industry than in the gay community (e.g. “counter the Homosexual Agenda”) and taken in its totality, this feels more like “this is what they say about us” than it does like the words of a gay person. For me, thee clincher was the listing of phone numbers to invite abuse.

So why would an anti-gay person write and post this?

That one’s pretty obvious. To portray the gay community as violent and lawless with goals of “shutting down” anyone who disagrees and, as The Peter put it, “signalling a new brazennes [sic] by homosexual activists”. And, equally important to their cause, to portray anti-gay activists as victims who are, in the words of this piece, “under constant attack.”

As could be expected, the more rabid members of the anti-gay community are chiming in. The American Family Association sent out a news article featuring Matt (Bam Bam) Barber:

“We are going to speak God’s truth in love without fear of reprisal, or even in this case, without fear of violence,” the attorney assures. “So I have a message to the gay terrorists that perpetrated this crime: Your terrorist tactics have failed, and you will not succeed in silencing God’s truth.”

So goal achieved.

But, of course, my analysis is based only on experience and familiarity with the language of activists. I have no inside information on this article and no way of knowing for certain that the person who wrote it was not gay. And though suspicion of the event is shared by others (Joe Jervis of Joe.My.God, for example), we could all be mistaken.

As I said above, it is entirely possible that someone did vandalize the Christian Liberty Academy. Peter LaBarbera has on his website pictures of a paver with “shut down Lively” written on it, along with a note saying “This is just a sample of what we will do if you don’t shut down Scott Lively and AFTAH … Fuck Scott Lively. Quit the homophobic shit”.

Now this sounds much more like an gay activist of the brick-throwing variety. Not very bright, not well thought out, stupid lashing out without any thought of consequence. And here at Box Turtle Bulletin we unreservedly condemn this behavior. It is wrong and if the perpetrators can be found, they should be held liable for their actions.

According to LaBarbera, the Arlington Heights police are investigating the situation. I wish them the very best success in finding out who threw the pavers, who wrote the statement, and whether they are the same party.

Towards this goal, I call on the Chicago Independent Media Center to voluntarily provide any information that can assist the police in identifying the person who posted the statement. There are times to stand strong on the media’s constitutional right not to divulge sources, and then there are times when a paper, as part of a community, can choose to participate in the protection of the community. I hope they do not to become a pawn of the author of the statement.

If a gay person or group vandalized the Christian Liberty Academy and then wrote a statement bragging of the event, I think I can speak for the overwhelming majority of “brazen homosexual activists” when I denounce the action and say that I hope that they are brought to justice.

And if the statement is a hoax written by an anti-gay activist posing as gay, I hope that they are exposed and that statutes dealing with false police claims are brought into play and that they find themselves facing jail time.

Full statement after the break

Read the rest of this entry »

The Daily Agenda for Saturday, October 15

Jim Burroway

October 15th, 2011

TODAY’S AGENDA (OURS):
Campus Pride College Fair and Prep Day: Los Angeles, CA. Campus Pride’s College Fair is an opportunity for LGBT students and their families to discuss educational opportunities with participating LGBT-affirming colleges and universities. The fair features expert advice about LGBT-friendly colleges, scholarship resources and even effective tips for campus visits. The West Coast College Fair takes place today at the University of Southern California from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. More information can be found here.

AIDS Walks This Weekend: Atlanta, GA; Austin, TX; Los Angeles; CAPhiladelphia, PA; Tucson, AZ and Watertown, NY.

Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Bakersfield, CAJacksonville, FL;  Memphis, TN; Minsk, Belarus; Oklahoma, OK (Black Pride) and Tucson, AZ.

Also This Weekend: Floatilla, Hong Kong and Fort Lauderdale Gay and Lesbian Film Festival.

TODAY’S AGENDA (THEIRS):
Scott Lively Featured Guest At Americans for Truth Banquet: Arlington Heights, IL. Tonight will be a rare event in the constellation of SPLC-designated anti-gay hate groups: the alignment of two of the brightest stars in one locations. Scott Lively, who calls himself Abiding Truth Ministries, will be the featured guest of Peter LaBarbera, who calls himself Americans for Truth About Homosexuality, a a banquet LaBarbera is throwing to try to raise money. And in their bizarre galaxy where truth is unrecognizable, exporting hate is good, and killing gays in Uganda is “the lesser of two evils,” LaBabera will be giving Lively something he calls a “truth teller’s award.” Moody Church pastor Erwin Lutzer will also speak a the event, which will take place beginning at 6:00 p.m. this evening at Christian Liberty Academy, 502 W. Euclid Ave. in Arlington Heights, IL, Moody Church pastor Erwin Lutzer will also speak a the event. The Chicago-based Gay Liberation Network will be organizing a protest, also beginning at 6:00 p.m. outside the venue. If you are in the Chicagoland area, please do what you can to be there.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
National Gay Task Force Founded: 1973. Dr. Howard Brown made the front page of The New York Times two weeks earlier when the the former Health Administrator for New York Mayor John Lindsay’s administration came out of the closet. Brown had resigned in 1967 when he learned than an investigative reporter planned to expose homosexuals in City Hall.  His secret was not revealed, which meant the reasons for his resignation remained a mystery until he came out 1973. The response, he said, was overwhelmingly favorable, so much so that he decided to establish a new gay advocacy group. This new group, the National Gay Task Force (later to become the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, or NGLTF) would be the first such organization with a truly national scope. According to an article in The Village Voice:

The Gay Task Force will work nationally on gay civil rights legislation and discrimination against gay parents in custody and visitation cases, and will coordinate information from all parts of the country about the progress toward gay civil rights. According to a spokesman for the group, a major coming out of the closet of other well-known people is expected in the near future.

Dr. Bruce Voeller served as its first Executive Director. Other leaders of the new organization included historian Martin Duberman, pioneering activist Barbara Gittings, and Ronald Gold who would had already played a pivotal role in the APA pending delisting of homosexuality as a mental illness later that year.

AIDS a Laughing Matter at the White House: 1982. The very first public mention of AIDS at the White House was not an auspicious one. It was the subject of jokes and laughter between the press and White House Deputy Press Secretary Larry Speaks:

Q: Larry, does the President have any reaction to the announcement ­ the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, that AIDS is now an epidemic and have over 600 cases?

SPEAKES: What’s AIDS?

Q: Over a third of them have died. It’s known as “gay plague.” (Laughter.) No, it is. I mean it’s a pretty serious thing that one in every three people that get this have died. And I wondered if the President is aware of it?

SPEAKES: I don’t have it. Do you? (Laughter.)

Q: No, I don’t.

SPEAKES: You didn’t answer my question.

Q: Well, I just wondered, does the President ­

SPEAKES: How do you know? (Laughter.)

Q: In other words, the White House looks on this as a great joke?

SPEAKES: No, I don’t know anything about it, Lester.

Q: Does the President, does anyone in the White House know about this epidemic, Larry?

SPEAKES: I don’t think so. I don’t think there’s been any ­

Q: Nobody knows?

SPEAKES: There has been no personal experience here, Lester.

Q: No, I mean, I thought you were keeping ­

SPEAKES: I checked thoroughly with Dr. Ruge this morning and he’s had no ­ (laughter) ­ no patients suffering from AIDS or whatever it is.

Q: The President doesn’t have gay plague, is that what you’re saying or what?

SPEAKES: No, I didn’t say that.

Q: Didn’t say that?

SPEAKES: I thought I heard you on the State Department over there. Why didn’t you stay there? (Laughter.)

Q: Because I love you Larry, that’s why (Laughter.)

SPEAKES: Oh I see. Just don’t put it in those terms, Lester. (Laughter.)

Q: Oh, I retract that.

SPEAKES: I hope so.

Q: It’s too late.

If you know of something that belongs on the agenda, please send it here. Don’t forget to include the basics: who, what, when, where, and URL (if available).

And feel free to consider this your open thread for the day. What’s happening in your world?

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