Uganda: Anti-Gay Evangelist Scott Lively Appears in Federal Court, and Facebook Takes Down 'Outing' Page

After hearings yesterday, a federal court is weighing a request for dismissal from anti-gay evangelical Scott Lively of a case brought against him by Pepe Onziema, a transgender gay rights activist and SMUG (Sexual Minorities Uganda) accusing Lively of crimes against humanity.

The AP reports:

Following court arguments Monday, it is now up to U.S. District Judge Michael Ponsor to decide whether to grant Lively’s motion to dismiss a civil action that Sexual Minorities Uganda filed against him last year. The Uganda-based group for which Onziema serves as program director alleges that Lively waged a long campaign of persecution of gays in the East African country.

Lively’s lawyer, Horatio Mihet, called the case an attack on the U.S. Constitution and his client’s First Amendment right to free speech. Plaintiff’s attorney Pam Spees, from the Center for Constitutional Rights, said Lively conspired with others in Uganda to persecute gays.

With every courtroom seat filled, court officials broadcast the proceeding to two overflow rooms so spectators could watch the arguments live.

In related news, Facebook has taken down an anti-gay user page aimed at outing Ugandans which Andrew posted about over the weekend, thanks to some exposure and outreach from GLAAD:

The page, called "Kampala Exposed: Facts and Rumors," was brought to wider attention by a Change.org petition started by the LGBT organization Freedom and Roam Uganda, and reported on by Towleroad. In the petition, Freedom and Roam Uganda cited a previous "outing" of Ugandans perceived to be gay in a local newspaper and the anti-gay bias believed to have led to the murder of prominent Ugandan LGBT advocate David Kato. GLAAD reached out to Facebook regarding the anti-gay page.

Anti-Gay Evangelical Scott Lively Thrilled That the 'Kill the Gays' Bill May Be Passed

American evangelical Scott Lively, whose trips to  Kampala, Uganda to foment hatred of gays facilitated the writing of the "kill the gays" bill and eventually led to him being sued by The Center for Constitutional Rights on behalf of LGBT rights group Sexual Minorities Uganda, is thrilled that the bill may finally see passage in that country.

Writes Lively:

"This is a huge blessing for Uganda and for me personally after having  been vilified globally (and falsely) for two years by the leftist  media as the accused mastermind of the death penalty provision."

And his friend in hate Bryan Fischer is cheering too.

Wayne Besen: A Gunman's 'Associate'? A 'Murderous Homosexual'?

Getting Wayne Besen off The O'Reilly Factor has, in the past 48 hours, become an obsession on the anti-gay right. Andrew Belonsky wrote about its first stirrings on Thursday, when several ex-gay groups jointly published a press release directed at FOX News, the nastiest paragraph of which might have been:

We ask the News Corporation, Fox News, and Bill O'Reilly to find more ethical spokespersons for the liberal view of sexuality. In their infamous Washington Post ad accusing FRC of hateful values, Besen and the SPLC claim that "words have consequences."  Yes, they do. And Besen's may lead to violence.

Wayne Besen is the founder of Truth Wins Out, and he occasionally appears on television to say nice things about the Southern Poverty Law Center -- the same Southern Poverty Law Center that's labeled the Family Research Center a "hate group" (partially because the FRC has stumped for legislation legalizing the execution of "repeat homosexual offenders" in Uganda), and who, therefore, are supposedly responsible for last week's non-fatal shooting of an FRC security guard by a crazyperson.

Now, the anti-Besenites have become totally unglued. They've penned a petition, bound for FOX News and signed by such headlining homophobes as Scott Lively, Matt Barber, Matt Staver, and Peter LaBarbera, in which they accuse Besen of being an "associate" of the FRC gunman. They ask readers to sign the petition, and finish off with this PS:

P.S. Thank you for standing with us against anti-Christian violence by murderous homosexuals.  Please forward this free petition widely to your friends!

Even Peter LaBarbera -- even Bryan Fischer -- has never before gone quite so far as to call a famous, non-violent gay activist "murderous." This is usually Fred Phelps's territory.

Wayne Besen responds here.

International Gayhaters Vs. Prague Pride And Friends

Tomorrow, Czechs will celebrate Pride in Prague, and the US State Department's helping. Exactly what the State Department's up to is difficult to know without reading Czech, but the US Embassy is, at the very least, promoting Pride like mad on its website. 

The embassy is very clear on why it's gotten involved:

Prague Pride Festival will focus on the topic of minorities within the LGBT community. The main goal of this Festival is to address discriminatory behavior based on sexual orientation and to promote a tolerant civil society and equal opportunities in the Czech Republic.

Tolerance! Equal opportunities! The embassy doesn't even mention "marriage"! 

Still, some Americans are upset. Elite homophobes of the United States and elsewhere have come together to protest with a very angry letter:

We the undersigned pro-family and pro-life leaders vigorously protest the participation of the United States Embassy in the Czech Republic in a so-called gay-pride parade which will take place on August 18.

As representatives of the international pro-family movement, we note the following:

The full list of complaints is tediously long, but includes:

At the directive of the president of the United States, Washington is aggressively promoting the “gay’’ agenda internationally, including same-sex “marriage” and the stigmatization and marginalization of any who object to the same. 

And:

The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (adopted by the General Assembly on December 10, 1948) provides that “Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family.” 

And: 

The Madrid Declaration of World Congress of Families VI (May 25-27, 2012) -- which was unanimously adopted by more than 3,200 delegates from 72 countries -- provides, in part: “We affirm the natural family to be the union of a man and a woman through marriage for the purposes of sharing love and joy, propagating children, providing their moral education, building a vital home economy, offering security in times of trouble, and binding the generations.” 

(This is an odd thing to mention, because the World Congress of Families, an international collection of anti-science, hyper-religious wackadoos, has no authority over anything but itself.)

And:

We can not imagine a worse form of cultural imperialism than Washington trying to force approval of the “gay” agenda on societies with traditional values. 

The letter also includes a shout-out to Czech gayhater Michal Semin, who asserts on his webpage that the site of the first-ever Pride celebration was ancient Sodom.

Signatories of note include Scott Lively, Linda Harvey, Peter LaBarbera, Tom Wildmon, Tom DeLay, and, most troublingly, Nigeria's Theresa Okafor, who runs the anti-gay Foundation For African Cultural Heritage. 

(HT: RightWingWatch.)

NEWS: George Walks, TED Talks, Scott Lively Freaks Out, And Goodbye Ernest Borgnine

Ernest Borgnine has died.

A lesbian mum responds to Jane Pitt, Brad Pitt's anti-gay mother.

Scott Lively pleads with a Missouri city to get serious about the rainbow menace:

Framed as an “anti-discrimination” measure it is in reality a “Gay Fascism” Bill that will make disapproval of homosexuality illegal in the City of Springfield and grant gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgenders (GLBTs) legal standing to sue their opponents, primarily Christians.

Starting in the 1980s in cities like San Francisco, homosexuals have forced many U.S. cities and numerous states to adopt similar “Gay Fascism” laws with disastrous effects on Christian landlords and businesses. Empowered by recent successes, they are now pushing into conservative cities.

... in a strategic political sense ... an “anti-discrimination policy” based on “sexual orientation” is the seed that contains the entire homosexual agenda with all of its poisonous fruit, including “gay” marriage, “gay” adoption, and heavy taxpayer funding of “gay” programs and projects. Wherever the seed takes root, “gay” power and control just keeps growing until it supplants traditional family values with San Francisco-style sexual anarchy in every social and political sphere.

Conversations about homosexuality and the Bible in Africa.

Gayfolk and Rick Perry have something in common.

George Zimmerman is out of jail.

On the cheap thrill of looking at other people's mug shots:

A mug shot doesn’t simply provide information, it lures us into a drama in which we are given an intimate, Leviathan’s-eye view of the state asserting dominance over an individual. In the old days, this spectacle took place live, on the scaffold of the pillory. Today, it happens in the creation and online circulation of the mug shot. In the faces of these photographic subjects we behold an alarming look of knowledge without consent, and the formal elements associated with this type of portrait—the rigid, head-on stare, the non-professional lighting and institutional accouterment—are charged with the candid photo’s shock of spontaneous revelation.

On the art and science of TED talks.

Fleeing from Scientology's "Land Flag Base," in Clearwater. The architecture's cool, but the sales pitch is creepy.

Three-hundred homeless folks take the stage at the Royal Opera House.

Fifty years of Bond on display in London:

... a bullet-shaped entry way leads through to the Gold Room, which features a life-sized recreation of character Jill Masterson's death by gold paint from the 1964 film "Goldfinger."

"Shirley Eaton's golden body is one of the most iconic Bond images, and we went to great lengths to cast a form -- not just a mannequin -- to painstakingly make a body that resembled her nubile proportions from Goldfinger ... "

Massachusetts Tea Party Patriots Welcome Anti-Gay Hate Group Leaders to Rally in Boston: VIDEO

Yesterday I linked to Scott Wooledge's excellent DailyKos write-up of this event in my round-up. But here's some excellent video of the event as it unfolded, with anti-gay Christianist evangelist Scott Lively and MassResistance's Brian Camenker, both leaders of hate groups designated by the SPLC, as they take the podium to trash gays.

Hats off to the activists protesting this event.

The clip also features a brief interview with Lively, in which he is asked what's the downside to same-sex marriage, and responds, "fire and brimstone raining from Heaven."

Watch, AFTER THE JUMP...

(via good as you)