Adding fuel to a fire started and stoked by anti-gay activists who claim that LGBT people are the worst threat facing the United States, vandals on Saturday threw bricks through the windows of a Chicago-area school that was set to host a banquet honoring anti-gay agitator Scott Lively later that day. The bricks were reportedly scrawled with the message âShut down Livelyâ and came with a note reading, âThis is just a sample of what we will do if you donât shut down Scott Lively and AFTAH [Americans for Truth About Homosexuality, which organized the event]. F— Scott Lively. Quit the homophobic shit!â
An anonymous person or people took credit for the vandalism, posting on a Chicago website, âThese chunks of concrete were thrown through these windows and doors for two reasons: to show that there is a consequence for hatred and homophobia in our community and to directly cause this event to be shut down. If this event is not shut down, and the homophobic day trainings do not end, the Christian liberty academy will continue to be under constant attack.â
Police have not said whether this will officially be investigated as a hate crime (such determinations typically require time and evidence-gathering), but given the explicit threat to Lively, AFTAH, and the Christian Liberty Academy, all signs seem to point to yes.
Yet the vandalism did not have its perpetratorsâ desired effect. Instead, Christian Liberty Academy boarded up its broken windows and door, and the event proceeded as planned. Lively, who is best known as co-author of The Pink Swastika, a discredited history that falsely asserts gays masterminded and carried out the Holocaust, was honored as an âAmerican Truth Teller.â
Whoever committed this crime has only strengthened the absurd argument, promulgated by many anti-gay activists (especially the American Family Associationâs Bryan Fischer) that LGBT people want to take over America and persecute Christians.
Fischer has been flogging this canard since May, when he announced his intention to prove that âhomosexual activistsâ are âthe primary perpetrators of hate crimes in the United States of America.â As with so many of Fischerâs claims (for instance, here, here, and here), this is nonsense. The fact is, LGBT people are far and away the population most likely to be targeted in hate crimes.
In 2009, the most recent year for which FBI hate crimes statistics are available, there were 1,202 anti-LGBT hate crimes. Based on figures from a National Health and Social Life Survey cited by a coalition of 31 leading gay rights organizations as âthe most widely accepted study of sexual practices in the United States,â 2.1% of the U.S. population is gay. The total U.S. population in 2009 was 305 million, suggesting that there are approximately 6.4 million self-identifying LGBT people in America.
In contrast, according to a 2009 American Religious Identification Survey conducted by Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., 75% of Americans identify as Christian. Thatâs about 228.8 million.
There were 89 anti-Christian hate crimes reported in 2009. So both proportionately and in absolute terms, Fischerâs claim about the threat from marauding âhomosexual activistsâ is pure bunk. But this incident of apparent anti-Christian vandalism â if thatâs what it turns out to be â will only serve to perpetuate his lies. Lively and AFTAH are already making the most of their victim status. AFTAH President Peter LaBarbera told the far-right WorldNetDaily, âWe see the homosexual agenda is becoming so arrogant in its growing power, but weâve never seen this before, what we would call âhomofascismâ being raised to the level of domestic terrorism.â