NoisyRoom.net

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

The New York Times, a paper supposedly devoted to freedom of speech, is giving sympathetic coverage to a frivolous lawsuit designed to silence an American Christian minister. Scott Lively is being sued by the George Soros-funded Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) for “crimes against humanity” for criticizing homosexuality during a trip to Uganda.

The suit represents the most extreme development yet in a Soros-funded campaign to expand rights for homosexuals and legalize prostitution in the East African country and destroy its emerging Christian culture.

Lively, who has spoken of the “The Global Threat of Homosexuality” and the “Lavender Marxists” targeting Uganda, was himself the target of protests from an ACORN-like group, Arise for Social Justice, as the suit was being filed and reported on by the Times. Lively is currently based in Massachusetts, where he runs Abiding Truth Ministries and Holy Grounds Coffee Shop, an inner-city Christian ministry which offers assistance to the poor, the homeless and the destitute.

The latter has been the subject of protests in the past from the Occupy movement.

“The lawsuit maintains that beginning in 2002, Mr. Lively conspired with religious and political leaders in Uganda to whip up anti-gay hysteria with warnings that gay people would sodomize African children and corrupt their culture,” Times “journalist” Laurie Goodstein reports.

There is nothing in the 47-page suit that provides any such evidence of a conspiracy. Instead, the suit attempts to demonize Christians in Uganda, also named in the suit, who with the help of Americans such as Lively are trying to protect their culture from foreign interests.

A major supporter of the gay rights movement, Soros and his Open Society Institute sponsored a four-day workshop in 2009 on legal strategies “to promote lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender rights in Africa,” including Uganda. The Open Society Institute acknowledged that its “Initiative for Eastern Africa” had drawn “scrutiny from conservative leaders” in Uganda “for supporting sexual minority groups.”

Contrary to what the Times reports, the real “conspiracy,” which is open for all to see, is now coming from the CCR, Arise for Social Justice, and the Times itself. They have launched an obviously coordinated attack on Lively, in an attempt to discredit and silence him. But another result could very well be more violent threats on Lively personally. Last October Lively spoke at a conference sponsored by Peter LaBarbera’s Americans for Truth about Homosexuality (AFTAH) when Marxist protesters threw a couple of bricks through the glass doors of the church where he was appearing.

“This is just a sample of what we will do if you don’t shut down Scott Lively and AFTAH … [F**k] Scott Lively. Quit the homophobic [sh*t]!” Read the note that accompanied one of the bricks.

In the court case, filed in Massachusetts, they are using a small gay rights group in Uganda, known as SMUG (Sexual Minorities Uganda) as their plaintiff. But make no mistake—Soros money and muscle are behind it.

The Times cites claims that the suit targets Lively’s “actions,” not his speech, when in fact the legal document is full of alleged statements by Lively that are said to be “in violation of international law.” As such, the suit is a blatant attack on freedom of speech.

But Lively tells AIM that he will not shut up and will instead fight the suit and those behind it. He is seeking financial and legal assistance.

Lively is a prominent scholar of the gay rights movement and understands its methods, influence, and origins. But with major homosexual advances in the media, the story does not get told. However, evidence shows that Harry Hay, the founder of the gay rights movement in the U.S., was a member of the Communist Party who believed adult sex with children should be legal. Former Obama Education Department official Kevin Jennings, who promoted a gay curriculum for the public schools, said that Harry Hay inspired him to a career of homosexual activism.

Rather than being a public interest law firm, the CCR is a hard-core left-wing legal group that defends various anti-American causes, ranging from accused Islamic terrorists to communists to Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. The group even praised Marilyn Buck, a member of the Weather Underground and Black Liberation Army, as a “human rights defender and fighter for justice.” The CCR works closely with the National Lawyers Guild, once described by a congressional committee as the “legal bulwark” of the Communist Party and still affiliated with the old Soviet-front known as the International Association of Democratic Lawyers.

Lively has been under attack by the militant homosexuals for years because of his defense of traditional morality and Christianity. He has written several books on the subject, including The Pink Swastika: Homosexuality in the Nazi Party, and Redeeming the Rainbow, about the forced acceptance of homosexuality and its destructive impact on society.

In an example of liberal book burning, the CCR suit even attacks Lively for distributing copies of his books in Uganda.

LaBarbera said about the suit against Lively: “It is part of the orchestrated homosexual activist campaign against him. It began with them lying about what he supports in Uganda, with the ridiculous and salacious false charges that he instigates and supports violence against homosexuals in Uganda.”

Since violence hasn’t silenced Lively, the lawsuit seems like the logical next step in this insidious campaign of intimidation and harassment. But because there is a First Amendment right of free speech in the U.S., the lawsuit takes a bizarre legal approach in an effort to silence him. “The suit alleges that I committed ‘Crimes Against Humanity of Persecution,’ which they assert is a cause of action in international law, by speaking against homosexuality in Uganda,” Lively noted.

Lively added, “Mostly, the lawsuit is a rehash of the argument the left has made from the beginning that my preaching against homosexuality in Uganda is the cause of persecution of homosexuals in that country. It offers a lot of out-of-context comments from my 2009 seminar in Kampala, Uganda, and includes the murder of David Kato as the most egregious example of the supposed negative consequences of my speech. The claim omits the fact that a male prostitute whom Kato had bailed out of jail to be his live-in lover confessed to bashing in Kato’s head with a hammer for failing to pay him as promised and was prosecuted for the crime.” The perpetrator, described by Ugandan police as a thief and a prostitute, was sentenced to 30 years in prison for the crime.

Kato was involved in the gay rights organization Sexual Minorities Uganda, the same Soros-supported group now suing Lively with the help of the CCR.

AIM reported extensively about what was happening in Uganda, in an attempt to rebut claims in the U.S. media that the Christians in Uganda were somehow terrible people for wanting to defend their country and culture.

Uganda had the highest AIDS rate in Africa until the country began promoting abstinence and traditional morality among the population. The AIDS rate then started coming down. But this is when Soros and his international networks targeted Uganda with the pro-homosexual campaign. George Oundo, also known as Georgina, reportedly confessed that he recruited school children into homosexuality under the cover of Sexual Minorities Uganda.

As one could expect, a major public backlash to foreign interference in the country’s internal affairs occurred. Lively was invited into the country by Christian organizations to teach about the immorality and health hazards of homosexuality, and help the population organize to protect their culture.

One result was Uganda’s consideration of a bill to toughen laws against homosexuality. Although the bill had a death penalty provision for certain homosexual acts, such as sex with children, Lively opposed that, proposing treatment for homosexuals and not punishment. He had never been in favor of what the U.S. media falsely called the “Kill the Gays bill.”

Uganda’s push for traditional morality met with strong criticism from the Obama Administration, especially Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and homosexuals in the U.S. media, such as MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow and The Washington Post’s Jonathan Capehart. Obama himself criticized the Ugandan government for considering passage of a law to discourage and punish certain homosexual practices. But Martin Ssempa, who runs the Family Policy and Human Rights Center in Uganda, countered: “Sodomy is neither the change we want nor can believe in.”

Ssempa is one of the Christian Ugandan “co-conspirators” with Lively named in the lawsuit.

At the time, a leading pro-family activist in Uganda by the name of Charles Tuhaise told AIM that Christians needed help resisting the schemes of the international homosexual lobby. He said he was disturbed by the general silence of conservatives in the U.S. to stand up for Uganda and its emerging Christian culture. Some of that silence may have stemmed from distorted coverage of the controversy offered up by “conservative” columnists such as Kathleen Parker.

For simply reporting on Uganda’s efforts to save their nation from Soros and his international networks, this columnist was falsely attacked as someone supporting death for homosexuals. The obvious purpose of such attacks is to silence critics of homosexuality and the Soros agenda for the U.S. and Africa.

LaBarbera said, “They say they are not against speech and yet everything they do is to create a chilling effect against us for speaking out against homosexual perversion. Now they’re going to start suing us.”

As part of the domestic version of this campaign, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) has launched a “Commentator Accountability Project” to keep conservatives off the air. Some names on the list, in addition to Lively and LaBarbera, are Joseph Farah of WorldNetDaily, Bill Donohue of the Catholic League, Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, and Ken Hutcherson, the former NFL linebacker and current pastor at Antioch Bible Church in Washington.

One of the new feminist hires at the Fox News Channel is Sally Kohn, who used to work for GLAAD.

GLAAD is holding a “media awards” ceremony in New York on March 24 that will include the openly gay Thomas Roberts of MSNBC as a special guest. Corporate partners of the event include media organizations such as Time Warner and its subsidiaries CNN and HBO, NBC Universal, CBS, the Walt Disney Company, ESPN, the A&E Networks, and Bloomberg.

Cliff Kincaid is the Director of the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism and can be contacted at cliff.kincaid@aim.org.