Peter LaBarbera has now posted the second part of his interview with Scott Lively about the act of vandalism against the site that hosted LaBarbera’s anti-gay banquet at which Lively received the “American Truth Teller” award.
During the discussion, Lively echoed the claims of activists like LaBarbera and Linda Harvey and Sally Kern who are asserting that criticism of their anti-gay activism constitutes a threat to their physical safety, as Lively revealed that he is considering filing defamation lawsuits against individuals who assert that he was responsible for Uganda’s “kill the gays” legislation, saying that the claims represent a “serious security threat” to him because it could induce “some crazy Vietnam vet” to put a bullet in his head:
I was specifically accused outside the AFTAH banquet, a man standing outside on a loud speaker saying outright that I went to Uganda for the purpose of orchestrating this bill, which is an absolute falsehood. This is actionable defamation, frankly.
Defamation is a false statement of fact – of fact, not opinion – a false statement of fact that is made for the purpose of damaging another person’s reputation and which does cause them damage.
And so here you have all that in a nutshell: you have a false statement of fact – you cannot prove this, there’s not a shred of evidence, they’re just making this up from whole cloth.
Now organizations like the New York Times and some of these others, they’re smart enough to know how to phrase these things so it creates the impression or the implication without them actually making the false statement of fact. But these bozos outside of the AFTAH banquet are actually putting their foot right in their mouth with this statement. I’m still contemplating whether I’m going to file an action – defamation is very difficult to win and frankly I would prefer to spend my time doing other things.
But, nevertheless, this just shows you the mentality of these people. They don’t care what the truth is. They have no evidence to support the allegation that they’re making. But what they are doing with this is creating a serious security threat to my person because all it takes is for one kook. And so, with that kind of hysteria being circulated among the fringe of these sexual radicals, you know, what’s going to stop some crazy Vietnam vet or somebody else that’s stopped taking their meds from just shooting me in the head as a service to humanity?
