Category: scott lively

The Pink Swastika and Holocaust revision

Inexplicably, Scott Lively, co-author of The Pink Swastika, has been invited to speak at an evangelical church this coming weekend in Oklahoma City. Draper Park Christian Church plans to have him in for three days of meetings.

Evangelical organizations Exodus International (scroll down) and Campus Crusade removed links to Lively’s article on the Pink Swastika in 2009. Even NARTH removed the article.

During the summer of 2009, with the help of historian J.D. Wyneken, I reviewed the claims of Lively and his co-author Abrams made in the Pink Swastika (click the link to read those posts).

With the Oklahoma appearance coming up, I reviewed those posts and here want to point out two which demonstrate Lively’s selective approach to the Holocaust. Unless something changes, Draper Park’s families will be exposed to Holocaust revisionism for three days.

The first is my post on how Lively and Abrams used Gunter Grau’s book The Hidden Holocaust. In this post, I point out how Lively and Abrams read all the way through Grau’s section on how the Nazi’s treated gays to pick out a segment more friendly to their position. No real historian does that. Real historians report what happened in toto. Grau reports the horrible treatment many gays received and Lively and Abrams do not.

The second is Lively and Abram’s treatment of German Nobel Prize winning author, Thomas Mann. Mann never came out as homosexual but disclosed same sex fantasies in his diaries which were barely hidden in some of his literature. Because of Mann’s interest in Nietzsche, Lively and Abrams view Mann as a contributor to the National Socialism, albeit indirectly. Although no one knows whether or not Nietzsche was gay, Lively assumes he was and because Nietzsche’s sister used some of his later writings (probably under the influence of mental illness) to praise National Socialism, Mann, the same-sex- attracted-married-to-a-woman man, is an indirect contributor to Nazism because he wrote favorably of Nietzsche. Pretzel logic much?

The strange moves don’t stop there. Mann, who we know was not completely straight, was an ardent enemy of Hitler and the Nazis. He recorded messages beamed in by Allied forces to the German people, urging them to resist Hitler and promising that help was on the way. Summarizing the post, I wrote in 2009:

First, it is worth noting how Lively and Abrams’ devotion to their thesis leads them to treat Thomas Mann. Apparently the primary reason he is mentioned at all is to make a stronger case that Nietzsche was homosexual. Mann was a great writer, one of the best fiction writers in modern history. He was a resolute opponent of Hitler and the Nazis. He left his homeland in service of his convictions and used his fame and gifts to try to bring down Hitler. In The Pink Swastika, his personal life is disparaged and he is discounted as an apologist for Nietzsche and thus an unwitting contributor to Nazism.

Lively and Abrams thesis collapses into absurdity when one considers the vigor of Mann’s opposition to Hitler’s fascism. People of all orientations and worldviews supported and opposed Hitler. The Nazis used anyone, gay or straight, religious or not, to get to power. And once they attained power, they systematically crushed opposition both gay and straight, religious and not.

The revisionist cannot rest on one or two revisions. He must continue until the revisions lead to absurd twists and turns. In the case of Mann, it is the same-sex attracted man who actively combats the Nazis. This glaring contradiction, along with so many others, must be either avoided or explained away.

Revising the Holocaust is not the same thing as denying it, but it is morally objectionable. Revising the causes and course of the Nazi evil does a disservice to an accurate view of human nature. Lively locates this evil in a variation of sexual attraction, thereby exonerating others. Such revision is a massive exercise in deception.

In 1961, Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram began his famous experiment on obedience to authority figures. Much to the astonishment of his peers, Milgram found that 65% of his sample consented to supply what participants perceived to be dangerous shocks to another person in obedience to an experimenter. This and other studies provide ample evidence that many of us, straight and gay, are capable of terrible evil under certain conditions. Revisionism takes our eyes off of this ball, and reassures the self-serving urges in us that we would never do something like that. Only those other people (insert the group you dislike) could do that.

Thus, such faulty revisionism also leads to stigma directed at the scapegoated group. As we have seen through history, ancient and recent, stigmatizing people based on their group affiliations or innate characteristics has led to the most awful atrocities.

When will we learn?

 

 

 

Oklahoma City Church to host Scott Lively

As unbelievable as that sounds, Draper Park Christian Church is hosting Scott Lively for a weekend of seminars April 27-29, 2012.

On the church Facebook page, they prep their congregants with an article from MassResistance.

Upcoming DPCC keynote speaker featured in this article…thanks Stephen Black of First Stone Ministries. Church, the Lord said “Be alert and ready for service!”. This Christian lawyer Dr. Lively needs our fervent, effectual, righteous prayers.

It is not clear what the role of Stephen Black and First Stone Ministries is. If that Exodus affiliate has anything to do with this appearance, they would be flying directly in the face of the policy of the national Exodus ministry, who denounced the Anti-Homosexuality Bill as well as Lively’s role in Uganda. They also removed Lively’s article about the Pink Swastika from their website.

I want to believe that the Draper Park people don’t understand what they are getting into. They read information from MassResistance calling Lively a martyr, but they will not hear Lively’s real message until he is inside their doors.

Most likely, he will tell them that the Holocaust was animated by homosexuals and gays want to recruit their children. He may tell them that he doesn’t support forced therapy, but he won’t tell them what would happen to gays who refuse state-sponsored ex-gay therapy. He might tell them that he didn’t support the Uganda Anti-Homosexuality Bill but he might not be as candid as he was with Mariana Van Zeller here:

 

He might tell the church what he thinks causes homosexuality, as he did below to the Ugandans in 2009, but he probably won’t tell them that both Exodus and NARTH have removed his articles from their websites.

I know there other Christians of conservative theology who are grieved by this.  It is sad when Christians are tricked into thinking they are fighting evil when instead they mislead and misrepresent. Mr. Lively, as a Holocaust revisionist, should not have a platform in a Christian venue.

For more on the distortions and misleading presentation that is the Pink Swatiska, see this link.

Human Rights group sues Scott Lively over persecution of gays in Uganda

Today, the Center for Constitutional Rights filed a federal lawsuit against Scott Lively on behalf of Sexual Minorities Uganda over Lively’s activities in fostering persecution against gays.

You can find the filing and more background at CCR’s website.

CCR is basing the suit on accusations of violating the Alien Tort Statute (28 USC 1350) which states in sum: “The district courts shall have original jurisdiction of 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.”

The filing makes a strong case that Lively’s work in Uganda has systematically, since 2002, led to persecution of LGBT people in Uganda. Lively, according to this New York Times article, thinks the suit is ridiculous, adding, “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.”

This will be an interesting case to watch. I can imagine other suits based on advocacy of persecution of other minorities, e.g., religious minorities, coming forward if this is successful. For instance, if there are people in the U.S. who support or work with foreign entities to limit religious freedom in other nations, perhaps religious minorities would bring suit here.

The Pink Swastika and NARTH

In 2009, I reported that NARTH (National Association for the Research and Therapy of Homosexuality) had removed all but one reference to Scott Lively’s works from their website. That reference was a note in their newsletter which described Lively’s short speech at the 2005 NARTH convention where he donated money to the organization on behalf of his Pro-Family Charitable Trust. As an aside, Lively has donated at least $2000 to NARTH since 2003.
In fact, Lively’s involvement with NARTH goes back further than his donations. In 1995, Lively spoke at the NARTH conference and presented his signature theme – homosexuals started and animated the Nazi party. In that paper still available on the NARTH website, Lively wrote, “In many respects, the SA was a creation of Germany’s homosexual movement, just as the Nazi Party was in many ways a creation of the SA.”
The problem is not that Lively documents the existence of homosexuals among the Nazis; that much was true. For instance, Ernst Roehm and others in his orbit were gay or bisexual. However, Lively errs by saying the “homosexual movement” created the Nazi party, as if the inevitable outcome of a movement for civil rights for gays is national socialism. See this link for more on the Pink Swastika.
In fairness, the paper does not show up in a search conducted on NARTH’s website (actually very little available on the website comes up from using that search engine). However, it does come up in various Google searches.
Although NARTH is not making this article easy to find, it is still available and demonstrates to me something about the DNA of the organization. Despite claiming to be a scientific organization, the leadership has invited anti-gay activists to present their views since the early days of the organization. Scott Lively favors legal restrictions on homosexual behavior and free speech surrounding advocacy for gay rights. At the most recent conference, NARTH featured Sharon Slater, a leading proponent of criminalization.
 
 

Things get ugly in Illinois

According to a World Net Daily report, a couple of bricks were thrown through the window of the Christian Liberty Academy which hosted the Americans for Truth About Homosexuality banquet earlier this evening. The vandalism was conducted in the early morning hours today with an email sent to a Chicago area news source.
No organization has taken responsibility for the incident which may mean that the attack was conducted by someone acting independently.
The email focused on Scott Lively, who was the recipient of an award at the AFTAH banquet.
This is an ugly episode and I hope those responsible for the vandalism are caught and prosecuted.
Reaction from WND readers to the attack reveals ugliness of another kind. One reader John Acord said gays should be confined to mental institutions (see comment below):

And then there is this comment from John Mccord:

Actually, Scott Lively and Mr. Acord are more on the same wavelength since Lively says he advised the Ugandan government to set up national gay rehab programs. He told WND this as well:

My advice to the MPs regarding the law they were contemplating but had not yet drafted was to focus on rehabilitation and not punishment. I urged them to become the first government in the world to develop a state-sponsored recovery system for homosexuality on the model we have in the United States for alcoholism.

I wonder why that suggestion would upset gays?
In any case, there is plenty of ugly to go around.
UPDATE: The comments I posted above have been removed from the thread at WND. However, if you look down the list, you can find more like them.
Chicago Tribune has a blurb out this morning in their “Breaking News” section. Since the story had already been reported several places, I assume they have a section for news about broken things.