Independent candidate for governor Pastor Scott Lively joined Jim and Margery on Boston Public Radio to discuss Lively’s personal crusade, and the viability of biblical values in a modern democracy.
Lively is an author, activist and attorney. His published works include The Pink Swastika and Seven Steps to Recruit-Proof Your Child: A Parent's Guide to Protecting Children from Homosexuality and the ‘Gay’ Movement.
What is the ‘Miracle Ticket?'
The Miracle Ticket is my running mate, Shelly Saunders and I. We’re both born again Christians who recognize it’s going to take a miracle for us to win.
You’re an honest man on that count. Why are you running, Scott?
Well I’m actually running to articulate a biblical worldview in the Massachusetts political arena: something that hasn’t been heard in that arena for a long time.
What would that mean? Give us examples of how a biblical worldview would manifest itself?
Well, I mean it’s most commonly articulated on abortion and homosexuality, those sorts of issues; so you hear that to some degree. But there is a biblical perspective on all the issues. I have those on my website, www.LivelyForGovernor.com.
What’s the biblical perspective on whether or not these young unaccompanied immigrants should be sheltered by Massachusetts?
Well, I’m glad you brought that up because I have strong opinions about that. I believe that these kids are political human shields being used by the administration, really by the elites of both parties, to try to push through amnesty, and it’s not coincidental that they’ve all arrived in the middle of the national debate about whether we’re going to establish amnesty for illegals.
Wait a minute. When you say ‘political human shields,’ do you mean that the administration has plotted to have these children –
I believe that this was orchestrated, yes.
Because it creates some incentive for what most people would call comprehensive immigration reform and critics would call, as you say an amnesty bill.
Well, they’re putting the kids out front. They don’t win the argument when they’re talking about adults, and so they have shipped these kids. The train that's —
By “they,” do you mean the Obama Administration?
Well, probably they’re behind it. the train that’s delivering these kids to the border is an American owned railway line that’s been involved with the NAFTA, you know, North American union plot for years.
So you think American officials are persuading parents to put their children on these trains and send them to America?
Why have they suddenly arrived after all of these years of our immigration issues on the border, right when President Obama has decided to make this his number one domestic priority?
Do you think these American officials are paying these parents? I mean it would be unusual for a parent to agree to send a kid thousands of miles through dangerous territory. Are they getting paid, do you think?
Well if I had them in a lawsuit, I could do discovery and I could find out how they actually orchestrated it, but all we can do is basically make assumptions and speculate based on the big picture of what we see on the ground.
I read that you called the President the 'antichrist.' What does that mean?
Well the antichrist is a figure in the Bible that —
No, I know. I mean, what makes the President the antichrist?
Well, I think he’s a man of lawlessness. The antichrist is most known for being lawless. This president has completely abandoned the principle of the separation of powers, he’s ruling by fiat, you know, starting with the czars in the early days of his presidency to now. All of these executive orders have been rebuffed by the Supreme Court. It doesn’t matter. He challenges congress, “so sue me,” when he doesn’t like what they have to say —
Well, John Boehner actually said “I’m going to sue you” first, but whatever. Scott, I haven’t met you before and I have to say even from the first few minutes that while I’m shaking my head, you’re clearly saying what you mean, which is a healthy thing for a democracy. I’ve read a lot about you in the last few days and the thing I don’t get is that every time you were accused of your major agenda being anti-gay – the Southern Poverty Law Center calls your organization an anti-gay hate group– your response is always that you’re a pro-family person. Why don’t you admit what it’s pretty clear to me that you are?
Which is what?
Well here’s a quote from something you wrote: “Homosexuality is thus biologically, and to varying degrees morally, equivalent to pedophelia, sadomasochism, bestiality and many other forms of deviant behavior.”
Well that’s quite a segue from what we were just talking about.
No, it’s not at all. I’m suggesting that while you focus on what sounds better, the pro-family part —
Well if there was ever a gotcha question that’s it —
– Can I finish a sentence? It seems to me that the primary core of your work is to promulgate an anti-gay advocacy. Is that not a fair statement?
I run two non-profit organizations. One is Abiding Truth Ministries, and that focuses on opposing the homosexual political agenda globally. I also run a second non-profit. My wife and I run an inner-city mission in Springfield. We take care of the poorest of the poor. We live in the hood ourselves, in a house that we’ve been reclaiming, a former crack house. Our lives really are an exemplar of many of the things that the left holds up as what all people ought to do. But none of that matters to any of the political figures on the left as long as I oppose homosexuality. They don’t want to talk about anything else.
We’ve already talked about other things and we intend to talk about other things.
Yeah, and I was pleasantly surprised that we had a chance to talk about something other than homosexuality.
Well, part of the problem here is that this is Massachusetts, and we’re kind of done with this now, I mean gay marriage has been the law since–
No, no, no we’re not done with this. Not if I become governor, we’re not done with it!
Well, that’s sort of the problem. We have families that are already married, with kids in the schools.
No, they’re not married. Just because government came along and decided to put a label of marriage on it, that’s not marriage. Marriage is an institution created by God. It’s not something you can just put a stamp on by Government.
But you know obviously that in this country we have a separation of church and state. Marriage is pretty much a government thing.
Well, I agree with that, but the concept of secularism as it was defined by the founders of this commonwealth was very different than secularism as it’s defined today, and it presumed a biblical worldview. Most of the things that I articulate, in terms of values, were held by the people who established this as a commonwealth.
But you recognize that marriage is done by judges at City Hall.
Right, but in terms of defining two people of the same gender as being in a marriage is a violation of the terms themselves. It would be no different than if you declared three people to be in a marriage or a group of five people.
But if you’re elected Governor and you have to raise your right hand and swear on a Bible that you’ll uphold the laws of the constitution of this state of Massachusetts, will you say no I won't?
No no, I’ll uphold the laws. I mean, we have to tolerate bad laws while they’re still in effect, but there are ways to deal with it. I would introduce a separation of LGBT and state. That would be my primary goal. The homosexual community should have to have the same limitations that the church does when it comes to public policy issues. For example, there’s no way to prevent any group from having a parade through the streets. The Neo-Nazis could have a parade through the streets and we couldn’t stop them. But we would never, never allow government officals to march in that parade. It would be inappropriate. And when Christians have a parade, a March for Jesus like we do every year in Springfield, the government officials can’t come out in their official capacity, because that would be a violation of the separation of church and state. The homosexual movement, which is a counterbalance, an opponent to the biblical views– almost like they’re contradictory camps– They have the benefit of government support where people who hold my views from a biblical perspective don’t. There should be a level playing field.
To my knowledge there are three openly-gay candidates running for office from Massachusetts. Maura Healey is running for Attorney General on the Democratic side, Steve Carrigan is running for Lt. Governor on the Democratic side and Richard Tisei is running for congress on the Republican side on the North Shore. Are they qualified to hold public office?
Well, I guess you’d have to look at their credentials for that.
But you’re saying you approach everything from a Biblical point of view. All three are openly gay.
The openly part is what I have a problem with. People should leave their sexual behavior in the privacy of their bedroom and not parade it through the streets, and certainly not promote it to kids in the public schools.
You know what drives me nuts about people invoking the biblical perspective? St. Paul also says ‘be nice to your slaves.’ Nobody wants to quote that much. Leviticus wants people to be stoned for not observing the Sabbath. We always seem to have groups like you focusing in on homosexuality, but you don’t advocate for slavery or stoning people on Sundays.
And the Biblical perspective, the modern Christian Biblical perspective, has an answer to those. Those are both Canards. Slavery in the bible was a form of indentured servitude. It wasn’t ownership of human beings like the American slavery in the old south.
So are you in favor of indentured servitude?
Well, we have a form of indentured servitude in contracts. We can’t be superimposing modern systems on ancient cultures. You certainly can’t extrapolate and say that because the Old Testament had indentured servitude, therefore we need to endorse slavery today. That’s a canard. Also, the idea that Leviticus required stoning for different issues. We were talking in the Old Testament about a nomadic, tribal culture. No prisons, no court system to speak of. They had to have very strong deterrent in their law. The principles that are in the law are still valid. But the application of those laws in the modern context is very different.
With all due respect, Scott Lively, that made absolutely no sense to me. You’re still picking and choosing the things from the Bible you agree with from the things from the Bible you don’t.
No, it’s a holistic, consistent worldview. When it comes to homosexuality was condemned in the Bible before the Mosaic code, and the condemnation was affirmed in the New Testament so we don’t need to have a discussion about the Old Testament.
To be honest, when I first heard about your candidacy and when a couple of people told me about you, I thought in all truth that they were kidding.
That’s quite a compliment.
I’m trying to be as honest as you’re trying to be. You spoke at the Ugandan parliament, from what I understand, and we all know about the law they passed. Your contention is that much if not most of the leadership of the Nazi party was gay –
Read my book, the Pink Swastika, published online at ScottLively.net–
I’ve read a lot about it. I have no intention of reading it. But in all seriousness, is your agenda to run for higher office so you have a platform to spout this stuff? As you know– and you made a joke about the ‘miracle ticket,’ and I admire that – you’re going to get about four votes. To a gay or lesbian person or to the child of a gay or lesbian person listening to this show, you could not possibly be more offensive to your fellow human beings, and you’re a pastor! What is the point of the candidacy?
Well, you know you framed this discussion with a ‘gotcha’ question –
What was ‘gotcha’? tell me what was ‘gotcha.’
The quote that you led with. If we had a –
It was your quote! It’s verbatim from your article. I read it this morning! Excuse me, Scott. Did you write that sentence?
Yeah, I did. But nevertheless, you know, I could pick through your past shows for the past however many years you’ve been doing this and I could find a few things to put you on the spot, and that’s what you’re doing. If we had a discussion about homosexuality, or sexuality in general in our society, from scratch, I think a great many people in this audience would actually agree with what I have to say. Instead, I’m on the defensive. I’ve been accused of being a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, you cherry picked a few things out of my past comments that sound very inflammatory out of context. And now it’s “have I stopped beating my wife yet?” There’s no winning for me in this conversation!
If I may, Scott, I didn’t just pick any sentence. I read the whole column you wrote and I would say the quote is totally representative of what appears to be your worldview.
I have a great deal of respect for every human being because we’re all created in the image of God.
People in Uganda are going to jail for being gay.
I don’t think that that’s true. I don’t think anybody is going to jail for being gay. If they’re going to jail, I think they’re going to jail for committing sodomy which up until a few years ago was illegal in our country too, and people went to jail for it.
So what was your purpose in going to Uganda?
Well, I was invited to Uganda to help Ugandans oppose the 'homosexualization' of their country. See, the backstory in Uganda is that Uganda in the 1990s had a tremendous victory in going from the highest to the lowest level of AIDS in Africa by promoting Christian values. The elitists, who have this multi-billion dollar AIDS slush fund and are pushing the sexual revolution all over the world, they were tremendously threatened by what Uganda did. And so they began pushing the sexual revolution in Uganda. People like Soros and others. They go in and they buy up media, they set up activist organizations on the ground, and they start promoting Leftist sexual values to change the culture. The Ugandans saw what was happening, they had a conference in 2002, I happened just by divine providence to be the replacement speaker for that, so I became aware of what was going on, so I was working to try to help them stop the manipulation of their culture by these global social engineers. That’s what’s really going on. And during the same time, there was an increasing amount of sexual tourism by homosexual men from Europe and the United States going and messing with boys in Uganda. These are stories that I was hearing directly from parents in Uganda. So, it’s legitimate for them to want to protect their country. The law that they did pass was overly harsh. I’ve always said that from the beginning, that I don’t agree with that as written.
I’ve got to be honest with you. We have a million problems in Massachusetts and in the United States. It seems really weird to me that you would devote this much of your scholarship and your efforts to fighting other people who want to live their lives in a just way. I mean is there something in your childhood that made you kind of obsessed with the subject?
I don’t have a problem with people living their lives – I mean I’ve always supported the original goal of the gay rights movement articulated by Dale Jennings of the Mattachine Society. He said that their goal was the right to be left alone. I’m a hundred percent behind that! But in 1968, the Christopher Street Riot, June 28th 1969, the homosexual movement radicalized and adopted Herbert Marcuse's militant– Look him up on the internet– Herbert Marcuse and the Frankfurt School– And that is what I oppose.
So you’re saying you respect the gay community’s right to be left alone. Would you leave their marriages which have been legal in Massachusetts for ten years alone?
Well, I don’t accept – I mean, people can make the choices that they want to in the privacy of their bedroom. I’ve always said that. I’m not in favor of anybody getting their door kicked down by the police.
You just told me you didn’t like sodomy in Uganda. I think they were doing that in their bedrooms, probably.
You know, in this country, you know the Lawrence vs. Texas case, which really was the precursor to the gay marriage ruling here in Massachusetts, the actual – they set that up. The gays themselves called the police on themselves in order to be arrested for sodomy so they could have a grounds to challenge the law.
Why do you even know all this stuff? What is it with you and gay stuff and sodomy stuff? This is your crusade.
This is my crusade. This has been my life’s work to stand up for Judeo-Christian sexual values in the face of an onslaught of attack by people who want to completely change our country from a Judeo-Christian sexual value system. Marriage – what the Bible teaches is abstinence until marriage and fidelity in marriage for life. You know, if we actually followed that, there would be no AIDS crisis. That’s what I stand for.
Scott, before you go, to honor my and Margery’s commitment to not talk exclusively about your views on gay rights, we’ll end with this: you live in Springfield, there’s about to be a casino in Springfield, there would be no casino in Springfield if people would vote to repeal. Are you voting for repeal?
The real problem with the gambling industry is that it enriches and empowers people who are willing to exploit others for their own personal gain.
So you’d vote for repeal.
Vote for repeal. Absolutely.
Scott, thanks for your time, we appreciate it.
Thank you both.
