Liberty Counsel seeking dismissal in SMUG v. Scott Lively

Yesterday, Liberty Counsel (LC) announced that they have filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit known as SMUG v. Lively. The motion was filed on June 22.

Scott Lively

In March of 2012 Sexual Minorities Uganda (or SMUG) filed suit in federal court against evangelical hate group leader, Scott Lively. The suit alleges that Lively violated international law by inciting the persecution of gays and lesbians, a crime against humanity. The alien torts act permits a foreign national to sue a US citizen in US courts for acts committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States. It has often been used to prosecute civil rights violations by US citizens on foreign soil.

In their press release LC suggests that this is all some George Soros conspiracy. Represented by a George Soros-funded, radical "civil rights" group, SMUG attempts to sue Rev. Lively in a United States court under the Alien Tort Statute.

For the record, SMUG is represented by the Center for Constitutional Rights. I have no idea how much money, if any at all, George Soros has donated to CCR and neither does LC.

LC asserts a "free speech" claim. However, when Lively advocated for the persecution of a minority with the expectation that said persecution would be carried out, he became part of a criminal conspiracy to commit crimes against humanity. 

In one of Lively's books, this prick has created a spectacularly stupid mythology about the persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany     supposedly by Nazi "homosexuals." Then, he merrily used the same dehumanizing tactics to cause the persecution of gays and lesbians in Uganda by dehumanizing them. Remind me again why the SPLC has designated Lively's Abiding Truth Ministries a hate group.

There is also international precedent. For example, in 2003, an international tribunal found three people, associated with RTLM (Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines), guilty of crimes against humanity and sentenced them to 35 years imprisonment. RTLM was the radio station run by the Hutu led government in Rwanda. It operated between July of 1993 and July of 1994 claiming 24x7 that Tutsis were "cockroaches."


Liberty Counsel also goes on at length about how persecution against gays and lesbians is perfectly acceptable and even the law in many countries around the globe. They go so far as to quote Pratima Narayan in 2006 from Somewhere over the Rainbow. . . International Human Rights Protections for Sexual Minorities in the New Millennium to make their case:

[D]iscrimination on the basis of sexual orientation still persists throughout most of the developing world. Gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender (GLBT) relations are criminalized in over eighty-two nations, and the penalty for being gay often includes public humiliation, hard labor, confinement, torture, harassment, blackmail, spurious trials with no right to appeal or death.

In other words, Lively committed no crimes and gays are not part of humanity.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Assuming that the US District Court in Massachusetts does not throw out this case (LC has a tremendous burden), we are in for years of litigation. Meanwhile let this serve as a warning to others who would export hate. Doing so could become very expensive and time consuming.