Scott Lively, who claims to have inspired Russia's "gay propaganda" law, has a starring role in an antigay "documentary" film as a gift from Russia with love for hatred of LGBT people, according to Mother Jones.
In Sodom, Lively, the sage of international homophobia and transphobia, whose activism has already helped cause untold harms against LGBT people in Russia, east Africa, and beyond, warns Russians about the supposedly massive power the "gay agenda" wields.
"The average American is not in favor of homosexuality," Lively says in the film, which aired to great acclaim on Russian television last month. "But they are afraid to speak publicly about it, because the gays have so much power and they can do harm to those people.
As Towleroad put it in a recent article about the film, Lively was the "evil bigot and driving force behind Uganda's 'Kill the Gays' bill." Small consolation, that bill became the "Jail the Gays" bill. Until that bill, enacted in Uganda as the Anti-Homosexuality Act in February, was overturned in August, it provided life sentences for "aggravated homosexuality" rather than death, as the Lively-inspired original draft prescribed. Aggravated homosexuality was defined as sex with a minor, multiple acts of same-sex intercourse, or engaging in gay sex while being HIV-positive. Lively is facing a lawsuit over his involvement in the Ugandan law, and he also claims that a tour he made of Russia preaching against homosexuality was the inspiration for that nation's "gay propaganda" law.
In a particularly dramatic scene in Sodom, Lively stands appears at the national headquarters of the Human Rights Campaign in Washington, D.C., blathering about the large amount of money the organization spends trying to "make homosexuality a human right," rather than helping the poor.
Sodom was produced by Arkady Mamontov, an antigay Russian journalist who last year blamed gays for a meteorite strike. It reportedly drew high ratings and critical acclaim in Russia.
Homophobia has been nourished and grown during domination of the Russian body politic by President Vladimir Putin. Putin signed Russia's so-called gay propaganda bill into law in June of 2013. That law claims to "only" be focused on "protecting" minors from "promotion of homosexuality" by banning positive discussion of LGBT identities and concerns in venues accessible to minors. However, myriad attacks and incidents of abuse have been traced by critics back to to the law, although Lively has claimed the perpetrators of those attacks are "butch" gays beating up "effeminate" ones.
Lively is currently running for governor of Massachusetts as an independent candidate, and he says it will be a "miracle of God" if he is elected in the first state to legalize same-sex marriage, according to MassLIve.
Watch as Lively begins his manipulative theatrics at HRC's headquarters at the 12-minute mark: