Sheltering A Convicted Child Molester: The Decline and (Hopefully) Fall of Arch-Homophobe Scott Lively

Police have arrested a convicted child molester working at the Springfield, Massachusetts coffeehouse of infamous anti-gay activist Scott Lively, who runs the business as a Christian outreach to local teenagers. …   

The homophobic darling of Latvia, Uganda, Family Research Council, and the rest of the Third World, Scott Lively, has fallen on hard times. And I would be hypocritical if I didn't shout out "Amen!" Of all the debunked Right wingnut "researchers", Lively has been the most consistently insidious. Any bio of him is as entertaining as it is revealing. But more about that later. The latest news about Lively involves allegedly harboring an unregistered sex offender and running a coffeehouse for truant teenagers while selling them Jesus.

In an interview after police apprehended Michael J. Frediani for failing to register as a sex offender, Lively confessed to the same employment technique that catapulted Sarah Palin, Sharon Angle and Christine O'Donnell into the national spotlight: don't bother to vet the guy if he says the words "born again" and spells the words G-O-D, B-I-B-L-E and D-O-N-A-T-I-O-N  correctly.

“Having been a pastor a long time, and having known many people with a rough past, it doesn’t surprise me he has a rough past. That he has a criminal record. A lot of Christians are former criminals. That’s the beauty of the salivation of Christ.”(definitely not my typo). 

Just days before the arrest, Lively had to close the doors of the Holy Grounds Coffee House to teenagers during school hours due to complaints by the school board that truants were using it as a hangout. He insisted that no proselytizing ever happened in the coffeehouse, but then admitted it was also a meeting place that held services for THREE different "churches." Yes, definitely hard times.

And he stood by the honesty of his volunteer, although being careful to point out that there were always two people manning the shop:

There was no opportunity for him to have done anything. Always other people there. At least 2 people on duty ... If not, someone may have ran out for coffee.

He said this in a Palinesque way not thinking about the silliness of a person who's manning a coffeehouse going out ...for coffee. (Must be very bad coffee at Holy Grounds).

Of course, Lively also said that he did not know about Frediani's past - just like he didn't know about the death penalty in Uganda's "kill-the-gays" bill.

According to one of his bios, Scott Lively is "One of the most knowledgeable and articulate opponents of the homosexual agenda in America."* But while Lively can point to almost total anti-gay legislative successes in Latvia and Uganda, his native land is starting to look askance at him and portray him as a ...loser. Witness the Daily Show spot that featured his contention that homosexuals were really the source of Nazism.

Purportedly Lively now wants to shed his anti-gay persona and retire blissfully amongst the denizens of declining Springfield through his ministry, Redemption Gate Mission Society. He is still, however, the moving force behind Mass Resistance and Defend The Family, two listed hate groups. He is still someone who Family Research Council counts as an "expert" source for anti-gay rhetoric. He still hawks copies of Pink Swastika to church groups. He still makes himself available for speaking engagements throughout the world. His voice is quieter, but any comparison to a sleeping dog is, in my opinion, still quite accurate.

Yes, Lively is on a decline, thanks to informed people shouting out louder than ever before. But let's not dim the voices, lest Lively return to the public eye.

* Conservapedia talk page on Scott Lively's bio: The Nazi's anti-homosexual laws were very similiar to Wikipedia's rules, i.e. selective enforcement based upon who you and who your friends are.

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