Gay Activists and Occupy Wall Street in Massachusetts targets pro-family pastor
SPRINGFIELD, Massachusetts, Members of Occupy Wall Street in Springfield, Massachusetts targeted Pastor Scott Lively and his inner-city Christian mission two Fridays ago with a loud, well-organized protest.
The Springfield division of the anti-corporate movement accused the pastor of “hate” crimes against homosexuals.
Pastor Lively is the author of two books opposing the homosexual agenda: “The Pink Swastika: Homosexuality and the Nazi Party” and “Why and How to Defeat the ‘Gay’ Movement.”
The group also denounced the pastor for calling homosexual acts a “behavioral disorder” and equating them with “alcoholism and bulimia” and “sexual sins such as adultery and polygamy.”
Occupy Springfield targeted Holy Grounds Coffee House, the pastor’s initiative to provide a spiritual lighthouse to the often dangerous downtown neighborhood, as the location for their march and protest.
A video of the encounter shows protestors marching up to the Coffee House chanting “Hey-Hey, Ho-Ho, homophobia’s got to go” and waving signs reading “Preach love, not hate,” and “We’re Here, We’re Queer, We’re Fabulous. Get Used To It!”
A group of Christians who heard beforehand about the planned demonstration through Facebook mounted a counter demonstration, effectively blocking Occupy Springfield from following their marching orders to “occupy” the Christian mission centre.
The pro-family group MassResistance called their defense of the pastor and his mission centre a “great day for the pro-family movement and for America.”
“One really got the sense that this is a spiritual battle and we had stared them down. Like all radical leftists, they have a bully mentality and have difficulty with anyone not giving in. We’re sure they’ll be back, of course. And when they do, good people will stand up to them again,” they said.
At one point pastor Lively stepped outside from the Coffee House to read portions of the letter of St. Paul to the Romans. He spoke of the “wrath of God” against “all ungodliness and wickedness of men who by their wickedness suppress the truth.” As the protesters attempted to shout him down, Lively read St. Paul’s words saying homosexuality is a “penalty” for man’s error in turning against God.
The recent attack by the Occupy movement on Pastor Lively follows on the heels of an attack at the end of October in Vancouver, B.C., where a breakaway faction of Occupy Vancouver tried to ‘occupy’ the city’s Holy Rosary Cathedral during Sunday morning Mass. The group was halted with the assistance of the police and the Knights of Columbus at the request of Archbishop Michael Miller.
Before this, on October 15th, members of Occupy Rome infamously entered a church and trashed a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Occupy’s hostility to Christianity can be traced, at least in part, to an October 13th call-to-arms by former Evangelical leader Frank Schaeffer. At that time, Schaeffer urged the movement to begin targeting Evangelical and Roman Catholic churches, holding them responsible for the “empowering of the top 1 percent super wealthy and the economic rape of rest of us.”
“Fundamentalist religion of all kinds is the enemy of democracy and thus of America. It is the enemy of working people everywhere too when it’s bogus moral crusades empower the rich to thumb their noses at our government,” he wrote.
