Massachusetts GOP Candidate Blames Holocaust On Gay Nazis
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
By Aiden Pink May 13, 2018
A Republican candidate who won enough support at the party’s Massachusetts convention to advance the primary for governor is a pastor who once wrote a book claiming that the Holocaust was caused by a conspiracy of gay men within the Nazi party.
Scott Lively, an attorney and pastor who has advocated for anti-LGBT laws around the world, won 28% of the vote at the convention at the end of April — much more than the 15% needed to get onto the ballot to challenge incumbent Gov. Charlie Baker in the primary.
A widely-debunked 1995 book co-written by Lively, “The Pink Swastika,” claimed that “the Nazi party was entirely controlled by militaristic male homosexuals,” despite the persecution the LGBT community faced under the Third Reich.
Lively’s advocacy in Africa helped lead to the passage of the Uganda Anti-Homosexuality Act, a 2009 law that in some cases called for the death penalty. Lively was later sued in U.S. court by a Ugandan group for having “aided and abetted a vicious and frightening campaign of repression against LGBTI persons in Uganda.” The judge dismissed the case on jurisdiction grounds, but also condemned Lively’s “crackpot bigotry,” according to Boston Magazine.
A columnist in the Cape Cod Times explained that Lively’s support came from a mix of pro-Trump, pro-life and pro-Second Amendment conservatives who have been dissatisfied with Baker’s relative moderatism. Baker has consistently polled as the most popular governor in the country.
Contact Aiden Pink at [email protected] or on Twitter, @aidenpink
It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.
This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions.
We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.
As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday!
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
