Scott Lively Claims LGBT Protections Bill Will 'Punish Christians'

Christian conservative Scott Lively claimed on Sunday that an LGBT protections bill will “punish Christians.”

Introduced by Democrats last month, the Equality Act seeks to prohibit anti-LGBT discrimination in seven key areas, including credit, education, employment, federal funding, housing, jury service and public accommodations, by effectively expanding the Civil Rights Act, originally approved in 1964.

The proposed legislation has the backing of Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Rodham Clinton, Martin O'Malley and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and a growing roster of American companies, including Intel, Symantec, IBM, Orbitz, American Airlines, Amazon, General Electric, HP, Microsoft, General Mills, Google, Facebook, Nike, Apple, The Dow Chemical Company and Levi Strauss, & Co.

In a WDN.com op-ed, Lively, founder of Abiding Truth Ministries and a failed gubernatorial candidate, warned that the bill will “give homosexual activists and their allies the legal power to attack and punish Christians and other pro-family advocates in virtually every sphere of American life.”

Lively said that the Equality Act should instead be called the “Gaystapo Empowerment Act.”

“Now, facing the potential passage of the Equality Act, I wonder if I or my organization, Abiding Truth Ministries, will be among the first targets of its overreach,” Lively wrote. “For the first time in my pro-family missionary career, I’m genuinely concerned ATM’s ability [to] speak freely in America may soon be curtailed – under threat of legal penalties, perhaps even criminal charges. The 'gays' are moving with lightning speed to consolidate their power, and their motives are not benign.”

“On my five-stage scale of the LGBT takeover of a society (tolerance, acceptance, celebration, forced participation and punishment of dissenters), Obergefell represents the establishment of Stage 4 as constitutional law. The Equality Act will usher in Stage 5 on a grand scale,” he added with a reference to the Supreme Court's ruling which stuck down gay marriage bans in all 50 states.