After several attempts to avoid prosecution for his role in Uganda’s controversial “Kill The Gays” bill, Pastor Scott Lively will soon stand trial before a Massachusetts jury to defend the accusation of crimes against humanity. This marks the first time a federal US judge has ruled that persecution of LGBT people qualifies as a crime of its kind. Lively led his Springfield, MA congregation — Defend the Family International — around the world to spread hateful messages aimed at the LGBT community.

Lively allegedly assisted in the structure of the initially-billed “Anti-Homosexuality Act,” in which anyone caught engaging in homosexuality would be executed. After public outcry, he supposedly assisted in a rework of the bill, this time writing that homosexuals would instead be sentenced to life in prison.

His legal trouble started in 2012, when the Center for Constitutional Rights filed a lawsuit alleging Lively was guilty of crimes against humanity for conspiring with the Ugandan government to impose a nationwide persecution of LGBT people. In a radio interview, he told Alan Colmes:

“What’s the gay agenda in Uganda? It’s the attempt to homosexualize the country like they did in so many other countries. … To change the moral foundation of the society, away from a marriage-based culture, to one of sexual anarchy. That’s why they invited me there. They were concerned about the attempts to do that, by American and European gays, mostly men, who were coming into their country, messing with the young men in the country, and trying to influence their political and cultural policies.”

In an open letter to the Russian people, Lively called homosexuality “a dangerous personality disorder that involves various often dangerous sexual addictions and aggressive anti-social impulses.”



Among his other assertions, Lively maintains that President Obama is gay; the “global warming doctrine” is “a scheme by transnational Marxist elites to establish a system for global taxation and redistribution of wealth;” and “homosexuals [are] the true inventors of Nazism and [are] the guiding force behind many Nazi atrocities.”

Updates as the story unfolds.