Late yesterday, Liberty Counsel client and American pastor Scott Lively won summary judgment against the foreign LGBT activists, Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG), which sued Lively for sharing his biblical views on homosexuality during three visits to Uganda in 2002 and 2009. The summary judgment order, entered by U.S. District Judge Michael A. Ponsor, puts an end to SMUG’s attempt to silence Lively and others who speak internationally about the LGBT agenda.

SMUG is represented by the Center for Constitutional Rights, which has received funding from George Soros. CCR is located at 666 Broadway in New York, an apt address for such an organization that attempts to use international law to silence people of faith and attack Israeli government officials.

In a direct challenge to the U.S. Constitution and the rule of law, SMUG tried to create new and dangerous precedent using international “crimes against humanity”—akin to genocide and war crimes—by relying on the obscure Alien Tort Statute (ATS). In 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court issued the deathblow to SMUG’s lawsuit by ruling that the ATS was never intended to allow a foreign citizen to sue a U.S. citizen in America alleging violation of some supposed international law. Scores of pending cases around the country were dismissed following the 2013 Supreme Court ruling in Kiobel, but the one not dismissed was the SMUG case. Judge Ponsor has a long history of support for the LGBT agenda and said he considers judges “the unappointed legislators of mankind.” Instead of dismissing the case in 2013, as it should have been, Ponsor opened the door for extensive and needless discovery.

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. Legally, Judge Ponsor had no choice on the law. The Supreme Court had clearly spoken. But what he did in his opinion is unbecoming by hurling names at Pastor Lively. None of the evidence supports any of the allegations. 

                                     Attorneys Horatio Mihet and Roger Gannam with Scott Lively

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