‘Vicious’ and ‘Extreme Animus Against LGBTI People’ Court Finds
A case alleging crimes against humanity against a Christian pastor has just been dropped by a federal district court, citing lack of jurisdiction. SMUG, Sexual Minorities Uganda, sued hate group head Scott Lively in his home state of Massachusetts, but ultimately Judge Michael A. Ponsor was forced to grant Lively’s request for summary judgment, closing the case that had been brought in 2012.Â
The Center for Constitutional Rights represented SMUG. Lively was represented by Liberty Counsel, which also infamously represented Kim Davis.
However, there is a win of sorts: the official federal court’s detailing of the “vicious” and “ludicrously extreme animus against LGBTI people” Lively exhibited, and his “determination to assist in persecuting them wherever they are, including Uganda,” as Judge Ponsor wrote.
The Court concluded that there is evidence of “the extremity” of Lively’s “homophobia and his determination to vilify, repress, and injure the LGBTI community, both generally and in Uganda particularly.”
Lively heads the anti-gay hate group Abiding Truth Ministries, along with Watchmen on the Walls. Many blame him for Uganda’s “Kill the Gays” bills, one of which became law for a short period of time. Lively, as the Court noted, traveled to Uganda and as has been documented, talked to political leaders in Uganda, lying to them about gay people:
Judge Ponsor also writes:
Defendant Scott Lively is an American citizen who has aided and abetted a vicious and frightening campaign of repression against LGBTI persons in Uganda. Defendant’s positions on LGBTI people range from the ludicrous to the abhorrent. He has asserted that “Nazism was in large part an outgrowth of the German homosexual movement,” and that “[i]n seeking the roots of fascism we once again find a high correlation between homosexuality and a mode of thinking which we identify with Nazism.”
Lively, the judge writes, “has tried to make gay people scapegoats for practically all of humanity’s ills, finding ‘through various leads, a dark and powerful homosexual presence in . . the Spanish Inquisition, the .. French ‘Reign of Terror,’ the era of South African apartheid, and the two centuries of American slavery.'”
He continues:
This crackpot bigotry could be brushed aside as pathetic, except for the terrible harm it can cause. The record in this case demonstrates that Defendant has worked with elements in Uganda who share some of his views to try to repress freedom of expression by LGBTI people in Uganda, deprive them of the protection of the law, and render their very existence illegal. He has, for example, proposed twenty-year prison sentences for gay couples in Uganda who simply lead open, law-abiding lives.
Also:
Anyone reading this memorandum should make no mistake. The question before the court is not whether Defendant’s actions in aiding and abetting efforts to demonize, intimidate, and injure LGBTI people in Uganda constitute violations of international law. They do.
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Thanks to Equality Case Files for publishing the Court ruling
Image by Tim Pierce via Wikimedia