Promoter of Uganda’s “Kill-the-Gays” Bill To be Honored in Chicago Suburb

Promoter of Uganda’s
“Kill-the-Gays” Bill
To be Honored in Chicago Suburb

GLN Plans Sat., October 15th Protest

A stridently anti-gay organization, “Americans For Truth About Homosexuality” (AFTAH), is planning to honor Scott Lively, a principal proponent of Uganda’s proposed death penalty bill for gays, at its annual banquet Saturday, October 15th at the Christian Liberty Academy, 502 W. Euclid Ave., Arlington Heights, IL.

The Gay Liberation is initiating a protest at 6 PM that night and invites all individuals and organizations who believe in civil rights to join in protest against one of the foremost American advocates of violence against Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender people.

Scott Lively journeyed to Uganda in 2009 with other U.S. evangelical gay bashers to stage a “Seminar on Exposing the Homosexual Agenda” even though homosexuality was already illegal in that nation. Lively helped stoke anti-gay animus by playing the "child molestation" card, asserting that gays are “looking for other people to prey upon, and that when they see someone from a broken home, it’s like they have a flashing neon sign over their head … male homosexuality has not traditionally been adult to adult, it’s been adult to teenager. … The gay movement is an evil institution.”

It was following Lively’s “seminar” that legislation was introduced into the Ugandan parliament that would impose the death penalty for so-called “aggravated homosexuality.” All gay meetings would be banned under this draconian measure, and heterosexuals could be jailed as well for any advocacy of homosexuality or defense of gay people. Lively has supported this further criminalizing of homosexuality, even as some evangelicals like Rick Warren have distanced themselves from it. (Lively advised against death sentences for Ugandan gays, but only because it might result in “public sympathy” for them; he prefers forced “rehabilitation.”)

More recently, Lively justified anti-gay violence when David Kato, Uganda’s leading gay advocate, was murdered. Lively wrote, "It is as if the militant ranks of ‘Code Pink’ were transported back to 1890s America to agitate for ‘sexual freedom.’ Our great grandparents would not have countenanced this. There would have been violence, as there has now been in Uganda." [emphasis added]

AFTAH’s Executive Director, Peter LaBarbera, has also spoken in favor of the Ugandan bill, and AFTAH is cited as a “hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center, as is Lively’s Abiding Truth Ministries.. LaBarbera has been hot-wired into Illinois Republican politics for years, serving as the primary local booster of the Alan Keyes senatorial campaign in 2004 and pairing closely with Jim Oberweis's multiple campaigns for governor and senator. Twice LaBarbera has put considerable effort into attempts to get anti-gay referenda on Illinois' ballot, trying to mimic the hate climate that accompanied California's Proposition 8.

Those traveling to the anti-AFTAH protest from Chicago are invited to meet other activists in front of the Ogilvie Metra station at 500 W. Madison at 4:10 PM, Saturday, October 15 to travel on the train to the protest. For more information, email the Gay Liberation Network at LGBTliberation@aol.com