On Monday, a federal court in USA dismissed an LGBT group’s lawsuit against American pastor and activist Scott Lively, who was accused of engaging in a “decade-long campaign” of persecution against LGBT people in Uganda because he voiced his biblical opposition to homosexuality in 2002.
After traveling from Uganda to the United States in November 2016, 12 LGBTI rights activists presented a case to a federal judge in Springfield, western New England, that Pastor Scott Douglas Lively , president of Abiding Truth Ministries should go on trial for human rights violations.
According to the gay rights activists, Lively (58), played an unparalleled role in fostering the climate of hate that gave rise to Uganda’s now-defunct Anti-Homosexuality Act.
“Lively worked to erase LGBTI Ugandans from civil and political life,” said Rutgers University law professor Jeena Shah, one of the activists’ lawyers pursuing the case.
Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG), a coalition of gay rights organizations, represented by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and co-counsel, appeared in court to argue that a federal lawsuit against Abiding Truth Ministries President Scott Lively must go to trial.
Judge Michael Ponsor of the United States District Court of Massachusetts has, according to sources dismissed the lawsuit.
“Spurred to action to counter the prospect of basic legal protections for LGBTI individuals, Lively and his co-conspirators, [Stephen] Langa, [Martin] Ssempa, Minister of Ethics and Integrity James Buturo and member of Parliament David Bahati, coordinated a dramatic, far-reaching response, which Lively and Langa would later boast had the ‘effect of a nuclear bomb,'” the lawsuit claimed.
Although Ponsor is an LGBT supporter and expressed sympathy with SMUG’s accusations, he had no choice but to grant Lively a motion for summary judgment and dismiss the case because “the record reveals that Defendant supplied no financial backing to the detestable campaign in Uganda, he directed no physical violence, he hired no employees, and he provided no supplies or other material support.”
“His most significant efforts on behalf of the campaign occurred within Uganda itself, when he appeared at conferences, meetings, and media events,” Posnor wrote in the court order. “The emails sent from the United States providing advice, guidance, and rhetorical support for the campaign on the part of others in Uganda simply do not rise to the level of ‘force’ sufficient to displace the presumption against extraterritorial application.”
However, Posnor asserted in his ruling that “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,” Posnor contended, adding that the court was only faced with “the much narrower and more technical question posed by Defendant’s motion is whether the limited actions taken by Defendant on American soil in pursuit of his odious campaign are sufficient to give this court jurisdiction over Plaintiff’s claims. Since they are not sufficient, summary judgment is appropriate for this, and only this, reason.”
The Liberty Counsel, a law firm devoted to protecting religious freedom rights and defended lively in the case, praised Posnor’s decision to dismiss the case.
“This is a victory for the Constitution and the rule of law,” Liberty Counsel Chairman Mat Staver said in a statement. “[A]ll Christians should celebrate the end of a lawsuit intended only to intimidate an innocent pastor into silence. But the court’s open display of activism in deriding Lively’s beliefs reminds us of the threats American Christians continue to face from a judiciary that is increasingly hostile to any expression of biblical truth to a decaying culture.”
Despite the case’s dismissal, SMUG still considers the judge’s statements to constitute a victory for the organization.
“This case is a win for SMUG,” the group’s executive director, Frank Mugisha, said in a statement. “The court’s ruling recognized the dangers resulting from the hatred that Scott Lively and other extremist Christians from the U.S. have exported to my country. By having a court recognize that persecution of LGBTI people amounts to a crime against humanity, we have already been able to hold Lively to account and reduce his dangerous influence in Uganda.”
CCR Senior Staff Attorney Pamela Spees also stated that the “ruling clearly vindicates what SMUG and the LGBTI community in Uganda have known and said all along about Lively and his role in Uganda.”
“I thank Judge Michael Ponsor, as well, for overcoming his clear ideological bias enough to acknowledge the legal deficiency of SMUG’s case and bring it to a close — even though he had the option four years ago to dismiss this case following a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that slammed the door shut on SMUG’S specious legal reasoning,” Lively said in a statement.
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