Free Speech or Safety? Anti-Gay Author’s Scheduled Country Club Appearance Raises Questions
A Republican organization that had a booked an anti-gay speaker for an event found that the event could not go forward due to liability issues following plans for a protest.
According to a story in the March 19 edition of the Falbrook, California publication the Fallbrook Bonsall Village News, anti-gay author Scott Lively, who claims in a book titled "The Pink Swastika" that Nazis leaders, including Adolph Hitler, were gay, was scheduled to speak at the event.
The book has been renounced by historian Erik Jensen, author of "The Pink Triangle and Political Consciousness: Gays, Lesbians, and the Memory of Nazi Persecution," as perpetuating a "pernicious myth" originating in the 1930s as a means to discredit the Nazis.
Jensen, according to a Wikipedia article on "The Pink Swastika," has claimed that "serious scholarship" has shown those charges to be historically invalid.
The Nazis imprisoned gays and sent an estimated 60,000 gay men to concentration camps. (Some sources say the number was 100,000.)
Lively is a pastor with Abiding Truth Ministries, which is located in Massachusetts. His book's thesis is, essentially, that certain expressions of homosexuality take on a hyper-masculine and militaristic cast, and that the Nazis can be viewed as one such example.
According to the article, Lively had been invited to speak at an event scheduled to be hosted by the www.temekuhills.com/index.htm|Temeku Hills Country Club, but the venue canceled the event due to liability concerns that arose after organizers indicated that they would stage a protest against Lively's book at the site.
The article quoted MTRA president Bob Kowell as saying, "The meeting was to be held at Temeku Hills Country Club.
"Temeku Country Club informed MTRA that, due to our speaker, the event could not take place there because they had received threats of demonstrations.
"MTRA was informed that there could be a liability issue with someone getting hurt on their way to using the public pool while passing through demonstrators," Kowell continued.
The article said that conservative organization The Pacific Justice Institute was casting the matter as a free speech issue and would be contacting the country club via a letter to demand that the event be allowed to proceed.
Kowell indicated that liability issues could be alleviated with a police presence at the site to ensure that the protest did not take place too close to the country club.
The Temecula branch of the GLBT supportive group Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) issued a statement on the event in the form of a March 25 letter, the article said, with the group's president, Maryann Johnson, quoted as saying, "There are gay families and friends of this particular community that have homes and pay their taxes, and to know that their community would let this demeaning act of discrimination take place, is upsetting and frightening."
The letter continued, "PFLAG informed the country club that they had upset the LGBT community and retaliation may be warranted.
"The Country Club did some investigation and canceled the event," Johnson continued, adding, "We have to create a world in which our young people may grow up and be educated with freedom from fear of violence, bullying and other forms of discrimination, regardless of their real or perceived gender identity or sexual orientation or that of their families."
The article quoted Kowell as asking, "Can a group be deprived of their right to host a meeting?
"Scott Lively is disliked by some. Can a meeting be dismissed because someone doesn't like someone else?"
Kowell cited an earlier incident as a precedent for managing controversial speech and protests, saying, "When Temecula showed 'The Vagina Monologues,' some people protested that event but were kept from getting physically close.
"That was at the public theater in Old Town," continued Kowel. "To some, that play was extremely offensive but still proceeded as planned."
Explained Kowel, "Lively is disliked by some extremists because of 'The Pink Swastika,' about a homosexual cult within the Nazi Party.
"He does not say that all homosexuals are Nazis, however."
Added the Republican group's leader, "The question should be asked: can we talk about a Christian cult such as Jim Jones but not talk about a homosexual cult? Does that mean that all homosexuals are always good and could not have ever done anything wrong?"
Kowell continued, "The overwhelming majority of homosexuals are certainly not a cult nor interested in violating people's freedom of assembly anymore than the overwhelming number of Christians would be called a cult."
Added Kowell, "I believe our group has the right to gather and hear the research that Scott Lively has gathered over the years," the article reported.