Case brought by Ugandan 'gays' against Scott Lively dismissed

A federal judge has unleashed a venomous attack on a Christian ministry leader for his biblical perspective on homosexuality after the judge found the law wouldn't allow him to continue a lawsuit by homosexual activists in Uganda.

Judge Michael Ponsor issued an order that granted American pastor Scott Lively a summary judgment in a lawsuit brought by foreign LGBT activists, Sexual Minorities Uganda, also known as SMUG.

They sued Lively, a commentator for WND, for "sharing his biblical views on homosexuality during three visits to Uganda in 2002 and 2009," according to Liberty Counsel, which defended him.

Ponsor concluded that federal law didn't give him jurisdiction to hear and rule on claims of damages in Uganda from SMUG members, so he dismissed the case with a summary judgment.

However, he wrote more than 20 more pages of diatribe against Lively's beliefs.

Ponsor described Lively's statements and opinions regarding homosexuality as "vicious and frightening," and he said the pastor's perspectives ranged from "the ludicrous to the abhorrent."

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He quoted Lively's comments exposing the homosexual content in Naziism and fascism, and he charged Lively with trying "to make gay people scapegoats for practically all of humanity's ills."

A WND call to the judge's office requesting comment did not generate a response.

But the judge ranted for pages, concluding finally that he would "allow" the case to end because "this court" had no jurisdiction over claims by SMUG.

He called Lively's perspective "bizarre" and "chilling."

It was a response to Lively's statement that the Bible "treats homosexuality as a form of rebellion against God even worse (from God's perspective) than mass murder."

In his blast at Christian beliefs, Ponsor, with virulently hateful rhetoric of his own, accused the minister of "virulently hateful rhetoric."

The homosexual activists had filed their lawsuit under the Alien Tort Statute. But Ponsor found that while Lively exchanged email and other information about conferences at which he would speak in Uganda, his actions did not rise to the level of giving courts jurisdiction.

Ponsor simply inserted his own bias into Lively's arguments, stating, "Defendant argued that aiding and abetting persecution of LGBTI people, no matter how unhinged and malignant, simply did not violate international norms with sufficient clarity to place it within the narrow class of claims subject to ATS jurisdiction."

The law, the judge wrote, apparently with reluctance, states U.S. courts cannot exercise jurisdiction over claims of injuries in another country.

"The record reveals that [Lively] provided 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."

Further, he explained, Uganda courts already had decided many of the questions being raised in the U.S. case.

But Ponsor claimed, "Concrete averments set forth the extremity of defendant's homophobia and his determination to vilify, represent, and injure the LGBTI community, both generally and in Uganda particular."

The judge noted Lively's commitment to following and promoting biblical perspectives on homosexuality was a "vicious … ludicrously extreme animus."

Read Ponser's rant here.

Liberty Counsel said it was pleased with the end of SMUG's "attempt to silence Lively and others who speak internationally about the LGBT agenda."

They explained SMUG had posed a "direct challenge to the U.S. Constitution and the rule of law," by creating a new precedent for "crimes against humanity," normally defined as a war crime or genocide.

It was during the course of the case, which had been kept open by Ponsor for years, that the U.S. Supreme Court found the Alien Tort Statue "was never intended to allow a foreign citizen to sue a U.S. citizen in America alleging violation of some supposed international law."

LC noted Ponser "has a long history of support for the LGBT agenda and said he considers judges 'the unappointed legislators of making.'"

The organization said in a statement, "Although Judge Ponsor’s order dismissed the case in 2017, for the same reasons he should have dismissed it in 2013 based on the Supreme Court precedent, he let his personal bias against pro-family values and support of the LGBT agenda slip into what should otherwise have been a straight legal opinion.

"What he did in his opinion is unbecoming by hurling names at Pastor Lively. None of the evidence supports any of the allegations," the team said.

The legal team reported it spent 100 hours in depositions and worked with 40,000 pages of documents in the failed claim by homosexual activists.

"SMUG failed to produce a shred of evidence of any conspiracy or persecution by Lively. Rather, the evidence showed that Lively, in a country where homosexuality has been illegal for decades, urged treatment of LGBT people with respect and dignity, and the liberalization of Uganda's laws against homosexuality, even as he spoke in favor of biblical sexual morality and against the LGBT political agenda," the organization said.

"This is a victory for the Constitution and the rule of law," said Mat Staver, founder of Liberty Counsel, "and all 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."

Horatio Mihet, Liberty Counsel's vice president of legal affairs and chief litigation counsel, said: "Judge Ponsor was without any authority – constitutional, legal, or otherwise – to showcase his contempt for the family values advocated by Scott Lively. Judge Ponsor's misinformed opinions about Scott Lively are not worth the paper they are written on."

Lively said he was grateful to God for his deliverance from the "outrageous and malicious litigation, designed solely to silence my voice for biblical truth on LGBT issues and to cause me pain and suffering for daring to speak against the 'gay' agenda."

WND report last year when SMUG's activists demanded the right to silence Lively.

"SMUG unequivocally seeks a speech-chilling injunction against anything Lively might say which SMUG finds offensive, to hold over Lively like a club," the legal team explained at the time.

The lawyers pointed that that SMUG could not "(A) identify any specific actions of Defendant Scott Lively ('Lively') in the U.S. that had a direct causal link to any alleged injury suffered by SMUG in Uganda; and (B) identify any specific injunctive relief that this court could even consider that would not violate the First Amendment."

SMUG had demanded, at that time, a prohibition on Lively speaking in Uganda, from making his books available there, meeting with groups there or discussing his beliefs with other lawyers there.