Last updated on February 8th, 2013 at 02:03 am
I wrote yesterday about the Religious Right’s renewed assault on Marriage Equality. The bullshit is flying fast and furious, but there are always standouts even when it comes to “OMG Tell me you didn’t just say that” moments. Enter Pastor Scott Lively.
Lively is the president of Abiding Truth Ministries, another group considered a hate group by the SPLC, and with Kevin E. Abrams, is the author Joseph Farah’s favorite piece of pulp fiction, The Pink Swastika, as well as a supporter of gay genocide laws in Uganda.
Lively, who formerly oversaw the American Family Association’s propaganda in California (another SPLC-designated hate group), was interviewed the other day by Sandy Rios of the AFA about Marriage Equality and the End Times.
Turns out they’re connected.
According to Lively, our culture’s embrace of equal rights for gays and lesbians will bring about the open persecution of Christians. He says this will be like the early days of the church (when no such thing occurred, as I have previously explained). In other words, he is saying that something that is not happening is going to be exactly like another thing that never happened.
If you ask, how does he know this, he will tell you that it’s because “the last straw for God before He brought [Noah’s] Flood was when they started writing wedding songs to homosexual marriage” and said homosexuality “represents the outer extent of rebellion against Him in a society and the last thing that happens before wrath comes.”
Lively: We need to remember that in the time leading up to the Flood what the rabbis teach about the last straw for God before He brought the Flood was when they started writing wedding songs to homosexual marriage and Jesus said that you’ll know the End Times because it will be like the days of Noah. There’s never been a time in the history of the world since before the Flood when homosexual marriage has been open and celebrated, and that’s another sign that I believe that we’re close to the end.
Rios: You know Scott you’re talking to thousands of the people across the country and some of them are probably pastors. What would you say to pastors out there who are facing, you know they’ve come up with these issues, these issues have come across their knowledge, they can’t escape it, whether it’s domestic partnerships or its benefits for homosexuals or whatever and it’s hurdling toward gay marriage in every state, what would you say to them by way of preparing themselves and how they should respond?
Lively: It’s time to adopt an apostolic mentality as Christians and to look to Revelation. How did they prevail? They prevailed by the blood of the lamb, the word of their testimony, and I think is most important, they did not love their lives unto death. We’re entering into a time in which standing for the truth of God is going to cost you more than just a few people walking out of your congregation and the temptation to compromise with the world, especially on this issue. I think this is the issue of the End Times, homosexuality. It’s present, if you do a careful investigation of all the scriptures dealing with this from the beginning and all the way to the end, God is painting a very clear picture that this represents the outer extent of rebellion against Him in a society and the last thing that happens before wrath comes.
He ignores the fact that gay marriage existed after Noah’s flood in other cultures and God was apparently fine with it. But then, you can’t be a Religious Right nut-case without ignoring all the relevant facts.
And really, was Noah’s Flood all that bad? It gave us the Grand Canyon, after all, a true natural wonder of the world. We know this is true because the fundamentalists have written books that say so. Who is to say another flood won’t leave us even more incredible wonders?
People wonder why we write about such things here, on a political blog. It is because people like Scott Lively have influence. World Net Daily peddles his crap and just this year, the San Diego Tea Party was indulging in these fantasies, saying of the Pink Swastika,
A documentary on the under-culture of homosexuality in the sadistic Nazi S.S., Nazi Party, Gestapo and Hitler Youth. The book offers new compelling counter evidence to the well known photos of Nazis labeling homosexuals with pink stars for dispatch to concentration camps. Equally revealing are the Nazi pagan earth worshiping rituals directly parallel to the Gaia followers of today.
The San Diego Tea Party pays homage to Joseph Farah, as though his approval of the book is all the evidence they need:
This is a deeply disturbing book,” said Joseph Farah, editor and chief executive officer of WND, who recently added a new 4th edition of the book to the WND Superstore. “Perhaps not until very recently, with the mandating of open homosexuality in the military and the widespread promotion of same-sex marriage, could Americans have been expected to see the relevance of this remarkable work to their own society. We say, ‘never again.’ But do we mean it? Do we even understand what actually happened? I didn’t – until I read this book.
But as the SPLC says of the Pink Swastika,
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.”
People – liberals and progressives – need to understand how pervasive this thinking is. It is not the unique property of a small clique of religious fanatics like Scott Lively and Sandy Rios and Bryan Fischer, but is widely disseminated. Lively’s thinking influences voters. It drives and is driven by Tea Party extremism. It is all interconnected.
We cannot write about Republican politics in 2013 without writing about religion.
Given that he also thinks homosexuals were responsible for the Third Reich, I think you know how much trust to place in his End Times hypothesis that Marriage Equality is “another sign that I believe that we’re close to the end.” But of course, I am addressing myself to you, for the most part, reasonable readers. For the Tea Party and others, Scott Lively’s say-so, and maybe Joseph Farah’s endorsement, is all that matters.
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