GOP candidate shutting down ministry listed as hate group

BOSTON – A Massachusetts governor’s race candidate is shutting down a non-profit organization that he founded that ended up on a list of U.S.-based hate groups.

Republican Scott Lively has described his Abiding Truth Ministries as pro-family, but his opposition to gay rights has landed him and his Springfield-based ministry on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s list of designated hate groups.

Lively said Wednesday he still believes society should follow the Bible as the guide to sexual morality in public policy. But he says he hopes to enlist “authentically conservative homosexuals” and political liberals in his effort to shift his emphasis “to a conservationist perspective in which the natural family is recognized as the essential eco-system of humanity.”

Lively hopes to unseat Gov. Charlie Baker in the GOP primary.

Baker calls Lively’s views “outrageous.”