Skip to main content Accessibility

Anti-LGBT Hate Group Leader Considering a Run for Congress

Scott Lively, the longtime anti-LGBT activist currently being sued for human rights violations because of his involvement in Uganda’s so-called “kill the gays” bill, has announced that he is considering a run for Congress.


Scott Lively

With an eye on the seat occupied by Rep. Richard Neal (D-Mass.,), Lively switched his political affiliation from Independent to Republican the day after the November 2014 election, Lively said in a post on the anti-LGBT sitebarbwire.com. But this isn’t the first time he’s thrown his hand into the political ring.

Last year, Lively ran for governor in Massachusetts and garnered less then 1% of the vote, an outcome he was quick to label a victory. His argument for why he might be a good candidate this time around is to correct the record on Russia, where he has been tirelessly working to lobby for a laws that are punitive to the gay and lesbian community.

American and Russian conservatives, Lively says, could be cooperating together to “roll back liberalism around the world.” But instead, the “cultural Marxists of both major US political parties are trying to drive a wedge between us with the absurd lie that Russia is trying to revive the Soviet Union.”

After all, Lively continues, Russia is standing up against the “homosexual agenda.”

Based in Springfield, Mass., where he runs the anti-LGBT hate group Abiding Truth Ministries, the project Redemption Gate Mission Society and the Holy Grounds Coffee House, Lively has traveled extensively for years in Africa and Europe in support of criminalizing homosexuality, often linking it to pedophilia and in one instance, even the Rwandan genocide.

In an interview with NBC news in 2013, he claimed that gay people are “dangerous predators, even killers” (The NBC interview is no longer available online, but quoted here). He is also the author The Pink Swastika, in which he posits that gay men in the Nazi Party were architects of the Holocaust. The book has been roundly debunked by historians.

None of that has stopped his influence abroad, however. With Lively’s self-proclaimed influence, Russia has passed a number of draconian laws since 2012, including adoption bans of Russian orphans by same-sex couples in other countries; the banning of foreign non-governmental organizations that support civil rights and the criminalization of free speech with a ban of so-called “homosexual propaganda.”

In May 2014, Russian president Vladimir Putin signed another law into effect, this one banning profanity in films, television broadcasts, theaters, and the media. In the wake of the passage of that law, violence against LGBT people in Russia increased dramatically and more LGBT Russians have been seeking asylum abroad. Lively has proudly claimed responsibility for the anti-propaganda law in Russia.

Lively may have a difficult time persuading fellow conservatives to work with Russia, however. The U.S. leveled sanctions against specific Russian individuals and entities for violating Ukrainian sovereignty in the wake of Russia’s actions toward Ukraine and its annexation of Crimea in March 2014. Russia’s actions prompted the conservative Concerned Women for America to pull out of the massive gathering of the anti-LGBT hate group World Congress of Families 2014. Penny Nance, president of CWA, said that she didn’t want to appear to be “giving aid and comfort to Vladimir Putin."

WCF later announced that it had suspended its conference in the wake of Russia’s actions, but members in September showed up in Moscow anyway for a conference that seemed remarkably similar to the original gathering.

In spite of all this, Lively is still giving a run for Congress. And he’s already fundraising through his old “Lively for Governor” site until he can “raise funds” to create a new site.

Comments or suggestions? Send them to HWeditor@splcenter.org. Have tips about the far right? Please email: source@splcenter.org. Have documents you want to share? Please visit: https://www.splcenter.org/submit-tip-intelligence-project. Follow us on Twitter @Hatewatch.