NBC News sat down with American anti-gay evangelist Scott Lively, who is on trial for crimes against humanity, for pushing the “Kill the Gays” law in Uganda and who in his interview happily takes credit for Vladimir Putin’s draconian Russia’s anti-gay laws.

“Yes, I think I influenced the Russian law,” Lively said. While some gay rights activists still think he’s just a laughingstock, Boris Dittrich, the director of LGBT advocacy for Human Rights Watch, tends to confirm Lively’s claims. Russia was plenty homophobic before Lively’s arrival but the American pastor appears to have given shape to that free-floating hatred, Dittrich said. As he passed through Russia’s regions, Lively met with politicians and bans on homosexual propaganda followed, spreading to more than a half-dozen areas before Putin swept them into a national standard

NBC has also posted a clip of Lively speaking at a Watchmen on the Walls conference in Novobsibirsk, Russia in August of 2007 :

“There is a war that is going on in the world,” Lively said through a translator. “There is a war that is waging across the entire face of the globe. It’s been waging in the United States for decades, and it’s been waging in Europe for decades. It’s a war between Christians and homosexuals.”

PURE EVIL

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