Scott Lively

Who is Scott Lively?

Scott Douglas Lively, an American author, attorney, and activist. He is noted for his opposition to LGBT rights and his involvement in the ex-gay movement. He is the president of Abiding Truth Ministries, a conservative Christian organization located in Temecula, California, and the former state director of the California branch of the American Family Association. Lively has called for the criminalization of "the public advocacy of homosexuality" as far back as 2007, and is allegedly involved in anti-gay legislation in Uganda.

Lively formed Watchmen on the Walls, an evangelical ministry, in Riga, Latvia.

According to a January 2011 profile, Lively "has not changed his view that gays are 'agents of America's moral decline', but has refocused his approach to fit his flock in Springfield, Massachusetts" and "is toning down his antigay rhetoric and shifting his focus to helping the downtrodden".

On August 14, 2013, a federal judge ruled that the case against Scott Lively, by the Center for Constitutional Rights on behalf of Sexual Minorities Uganda, a Uganda-based coalition of LGBT rights and advocacy groups, can move forward against him. This is a first-of-its kind case in which the lawsuit alleges that Lively's actions over the past decade, in collaboration with some Ugandan government officials and Ugandan religious leaders, are responsible for depriving LGBT Ugandans of their fundamental human rights based solely on their identity, which the lawsuits alleges falls under the definition of persecution under international law and is a crime against humanity. This effort resulted in the introduction of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill which Lively allegedly helped engineer.