Uganda Group Sues U.S. Evangelist for Death Penalty Bill for Gays

By Larry Mcshane
New York Daily News
March 15, 2012

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/uganda-group-sues-u-s-evangelist-death-penalty-bill-gays-article-1.1039675?localLinksEnabled=false

The Center for Constitutional Rights filed a lawsuit against Massachusetts-based evangelist Scott Lively in Federal Court in Springfield, alleging that he has waged a decades-long campaign to persecute gays in Uganda.

A Massachusetts evangelist was sued by an East African gay advocacy group that accuses him of helping draft a Ugandan bill to impose the death penalty on homosexuals.

Scott Lively, of Abiding Truth Ministries, was slapped with a federal lawsuit asking for a judgment that his actions violated international law — and seeking cash damages.

“We hope that he will be held accountable for what he did in Uganda,” said human rights activist Frank Mugisha of Sexual Ministries Uganda. “We want to send out a clear message to him and others.”

Mugisha, the 2011 winner of the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award, blamed Lively for “helping spread propaganda and violence” against gays in Uganda.

Lively, whose parish is based in Springfield, Mass., was among a group of U.S. clergy which visited Uganda in 2009 — just before debate began on the bill.

But he told The Associated Press that he supported therapy, not punishment, for homosexuals — and labeled the lawsuit “completely frivolous.”

Human rights activist Frank Mugisha of Sexual Ministries Uganda.

The court papers charge Lively with comparing Uganda’s gay population to “the Nazis and Rwandan murderers,” and describing the gay rights movement as “pedophilic.”

Lively responded that those remarks from his 2009 seminars in the capital city of Kampala were taken out of context.

“I challenge the plaintiffs and their allies to publish the complete footage ... on the internet,” he wrote in an e-mail to the AP. “They will not do this, or their duplicity would be exposed.”

The original Ugandan bill called for the death penalty against gays for certain acts, including sexual behavior by homosexuals infected with AIDS.

It was since scaled back to replace the death penalty with life behind bars. Ugandan officials said last month that they did not support the bill, which remains under debate in the East African nation.

After the lawsuit was file Wednesday, about 70 black-clad demonstrators marched the half-mile from the courthouse to Lively’s Holy Grounds Coffee House.

The protesters, marching to a steady drum beat, carried coffins and signs with the names of gays persecuted in Uganda.

With News Wire Services

Contact: lmcshane@nydailynews.com