Evangelist Scott Lively is being sued
by an Ugandan gay rights group in federal court in Massachusetts.
The group Sexual Minorities Uganda on
Wednesday filed its lawsuit, which claims that 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,” The
New York Times reported.
The group claims that Lively is
responsible for the persecution, torture and even murder of gay men
and lesbians in Uganda.
In 2009, Member of Parliament (MP)
David Bahati introduced a bill which prescribed the death sentence
for unrepentant gays. After an outcry from Western nations, the
legislature passed on Bahati's proposal, but the lawmaker
reintroduced it last month.
Bahati is also named in the suit as a
co-conspirator.
“That's about as ridiculous as it
gets,” Lively told the paper. “I've never done anything in
Uganda except preach the Gospel and speak my opinion about the
homosexual issue.”
Lively, the founder and president of
Abiding Truth Ministries, is the author of The Pink Swastika:
Homosexuality in the Nazi Party, which attempts to draw parallels
between the modern gay rights movement and Nazism, and calls gay
rights dangerous.
In a
blog post from 2009, Lively described his anti-gay advocacy in
Uganda, where he addressed members of Parliament, students and
Christian leaders.
Last
October, the anti-gay rights group Americans for Truth About
Homosexuality honored Lively with its American Truth Teller award.