MEDIA ADVISORY
Elevating Unity and Love Over Divisiveness and Hate is the Goal of Diverse Coalition of Local Faith Leaders, Community Advocates, and Experts
What: A diverse coalition of local faith leaders, community advocates, and national experts will hold a press conference on Thursday, April 26 to spotlight the hateful and divisive career of Holocaust revisionist Scott Lively, author of the discredited book The Pink Swastika, which blames the Holocaust on gay people. The coaltion was compelled to mobilize and speak out after Oklahoma City’s Draper Park Christian Church unwisely invited Lively to preach to the congregation on April 27-29. Lively’s ministry, Abiding Truth is recognized as an official hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
“Elevating unity and love over divisiveness and hate is our goal,” said Truth Wins Out Executive Director Wayne Besen, who will speak at the press conference. “It is critical that we put a bright spotlight on Scott Lively’s reprehensible record so people understand that he is a Holocaust revisionist. Far from being the moral leader that he presents himself to be, Lively is notorious and widely discredited for cynically twisting one of the world’s most horrific historical events for political gain.”
Where: Church of the Open Arms, 3131 N. Penn, Oklahoma City
When: Thursday, April 26, 1:30 p.m.
Who: Rev. Dr. Kathy McCallie, the open-and-affirming faith community
Scott J. Hamilton, Cimarron Alliance
Nathaniel Batchelder, Central Oklahoma Human Rights Alliance
Wayne Besen, Truth Wins Out
Additional Speakers TBA
Additionally, there will be an open community meeting broadcast live from Church of the Open Arms.
What: Live-Audience edition of Oklahoma: Inside Out called “Speaking Only The Truth”
When: Friday, April 27, 7-8:30 P.M.
Who: Scott J. Hamilton, Cimarron Alliance, show host
Wayne Besen, Truth Wins Out
Michael Kornblit, author of Until We Meet Again: A True Story of Love and Survival in the Holocaust
Pastor Neill Spurgeon, an evangelical minister who suffered at the hands of the “ex-gay” industry and today suffers PTST as a result
There will also be a time of reflective prayer:
What: Supportive churches will have their doors open for a time of personal prayer; individuals are asked to reflect on the importance of truth.
When: Saturday, April 28, 9AM-Noon
Background: Lively first came into the public eye twenty years ago in Oregon as an activist in the Oregon Citizens Alliance, which worked to pass anti-gay laws. Lively, a “Holocaust revisionist,” co-authored The Pink Swastika: Homosexuality in the Nazi Party in 2002. According to the authors:
“The Pink Swastika will show that there was far more brutality, torture, and murder committed against innocent people by Nazi deviants and homosexuals than there ever was against homosexuals.”
In February 2009, Lively took his teachings to Family Life Network (FLN) in Uganda. For three days he exploited Ugandan fears with his outlandish lies: gays are child molesters, they recruit children, they were Hitler’s henchmen in the Holocaust because “gay men are exceptionally brutal and savage,” their intention is to overtake society and destroy the family, and the only hope (besides imprisonment) is to get them into conversion facilities to make them straight. Within one month of the conference, FLN was quoting Lively’s work and calling for mass arrests of gay and transgender people. The very next month Ugandan Parliament leader, David Bahati, introduced a bill to strengthen Uganda’s law against homosexuality to include arrest and even death.
Lively is currently active in Eastern Europe, Moldova, and Russia bringing them the same strain of anti-gay teaching he once exported to Uganda.
