When Setti Warren, a Democrat from Newton, announced he was dropping out of the gubernatorial race no one could have fathomed the world-renowned ultra-conservative Republican homophobe Pastor Scott Lively of Springfield would be seriously tossing his hat in to challenge Republican Governor Charlie Baker.

At the Massachusetts GOP Nominating Convention in Worcester over the weekend Baker overwhelmingly won the party’s endorsement with just under 70 percent of the vote. Surprisingly, Lively won 28 percent - well over the 15 percent needed to face-off with Baker in the September primary and a substantial uptick from the less than 1 percent he received in 2014 as an independent.

At the Convention, Lively declared himself as a “true” Republican who stands for conservative values in the Bay State, and as a staunch Trumpian, he wants to do away with sanctuary cities and build “the wall” along the Mexican border.

As president of Abiding Truth Ministries and director of Redemption Gate Mission Society, both based in Springfield, Lively has used both “outreach ministries” as an international crusade to campaign against LGBTQs. And, Lively’s call for the criminalization of LGBTQ people across the globe has been criminal.

“The gay movement is an evil institution [whose] goal is to defeat the marriage-based society and replace it with a culture of sexual promiscuity in which there’s no restrictions on sexual conduct except the principle of mutual choice,” Lively stated at a conference in Kampala, Uganda in March 2009

Last summer, at the 2017 DignityUSA conference in Boston, Warry Joanita Ssenfuka, director of Freedom and Roam Uganda (FARUG), spoke on being a Catholic lesbian activist in Uganda, where LGBTQI people have no legal protections, and frequently suffer violence and imprisonment. Ssenfuka is a plaintiff in “Sexual Minorities Uganda v. Scott Lively.” Scott Lively is accused of persecuting LGBTQI people abroad, resulting in the introduction of an Anti-Homosexuality Bill he helped engineer in Uganda, which is a crime against humanity under international law.

Regrettably, U.S District Court Judge Michael Ponsor dismissed the case brought by Ssenfuka and her group. However, in support of their case, Ponsor publicly denounced Lively’s “crackpot bigotry.”

“Defendant Scott Lively is an American citizen who has aided and abetted a vicious and frightening campaign of repression against LGBTI persons in Uganda,” Ponsor said.

In 2013, Lively got the backing of Russian President Vladimir Putin to sign a bill outlawing “homosexual propaganda” in the country. Although homosexuality was decriminalized in Russia shortly following the fall of the USSR in 1991, Lively’s 50-city tour of Russia and other former Soviet republics ramped up an anti-gay purging campaign that lead to more than a double increase in hate crimes. For example, as a direct result from the signing of the anti-gay bill, from October 2013 - February 2014, Moscow’s largest gay nightclub “Central Station” was subject to anti-gay attacks, which included bullying, beatings, stabbings, gunfire and gas attacks, to name a few. In February 2014, the ABC News Nightline special “Moscow is Burning” documented the attacks and anti-gay vigilantism. Sadly, “Central Station” shut down and several of its employees fled the country for their safety. Lively, however, boast on “Right Wing Watch.org“ television that in assisting Putin to pass the bill was “one of the proudest achievements” of his career.

Lively joined by another homophobe, Kevin Abrams, penned a Holocaust revisionist book, titled “The Pink Swastika.” Its premise claims that gay men helped mastermind the Holocaust. They were not systematically exterminated by the Nazis, but rather they contributed to the Nazi party’s control of militaristic gay males because of their homosexuality and bonding of stormtroopers.

In the 5th edition of the book Lively continues the refute incontrovertibly evidence and facts that debunks his premise.

"If 'The Pink Swastika" were the "pack of lies" the homosexual movement claims it is, the book would not have influenced their "Gay Holocaust" strategy in the smallest degree. It would have been easy to discredit and disregard. Instead, how did the "gay" leaders respond to its challenge? They stopped talking about the Nazis almost entirely and changed their symbol from the pink triangle to the rainbow flag. “

Lively’s anti-gay crusade has been around for a long time, starting in the early 1990’s in Oregon. His activism in the Oregon Citizens Alliance (OCA) was supported by Oregon’s chapter of Pat Robertson’s Christian Coalition to pass anti-LGBT measures on the state ballot.

As a self- proclaimed man of the cloth, Lively ’s anti-gay activism, and global outreach ministries have spewed vitriol counter to the Christian gospel. And every minister I’ve talked with has agreed.

"Pastor Scott Lively’s gubernatorial candidacy is part of a dangerous movement to roll back LGBT civil rights and erase LGBT presence. His ideology is all the more troubling for being justified by his approach to Christian faith," Rev. Mary Martha Thiel of Boston stated. "Inflicting religious trauma has replaced the separation of church and State.”

Also, Lively’s vitriol is counter to the state’s constitution, the world’s oldest functioning one, which states in the preamble the following:

“The end of the institution, maintenance, and administration of government, is to secure the existence of the body politic, to protect it, and to furnish the individuals who compose it with the power of enjoying in safety and tranquillity their natural rights, and the blessings of life: and whenever these great objects are not obtained, the people have a right to alter the government, and to take measures necessary for their safety, prosperity, and happiness."

Lively should brush up on both his Bible and the Massachusetts constitution before moving forward.