Several websites have noted the latest developments in Bradlee Dean’s lawsuit against Rachel Maddow and MSNBC. WND‘s Bob Unrah summarized Dean’s case last summer:
Dean, a renowned hard metal rocker who became a Christian after suffering a hard life as a young boy, has dedicated his life to his ministry’s mission, the group said.
He once made a statement on the radio criticizing his fellow Christians for not taking a stronger stand about the “gay” rights lobby promoting homosexuality in schools. According to the ministry announcement, he made a strong reference to Muslims taking the issue more seriously than Christians, referring to Islamic law, but did not condone their practices. It was Bradlee’s intent to focus attention on the issue, not to advocate harm to anyone, the statement said.
Despite the clear statement by Dean on his ministry’s website and elsewhere that he was not calling for the execution of homosexuals, according to the announcement, “MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow and others seized on and accused Dean on her show of supporting the killing of homosexuals, as is the practice in some radical Islamic countries. This seriously has harmed Dean and the ministry, who pride themselves on respect and love for all people.”
Unrah also helpfully quoted Dean’s words:
Muslims are calling for the execution for homosexuals in America, this was just released yesterday and it shows you that they themselves are upholding the laws that are even in the Bible, the Judeo Christian God. They seem to be more moral than even the American Christians do. Because these people are livid about enforcing their laws, they know homosexuality is an abomination. And I continually reach out to the homosexual communities on this radio show, and I warn them, which ones love? Here you have Obama condemning it behind the backs of the homosexuals but to their faces he’s promoting it. I say this to my gay friends out there the ones that continuously nitpick everything I say. Hollywood is promoting immorality and the God of the Heavens in Jesus names is warning you to flee from the wrath to come, yet you have Muslims calling for your execution. If America won’t enforce the laws, God will raise up a foreign enemy to do just that’s what you’re seeing in America today. Read Leviticus 26 America.
This was of some wider interest because Dean’s “You Can Run But You Cannot Hide” ministry had previously received an endorsement from Michele Bachmann (“They’re way on course. Because they get it. They get what this is all about.”), and he has links with other Republicans in Minnesota (in May 2011 Dean was invited to give the opening prayer at the at the Minnesota House of Representatives, which he used as an opportunity to attack Obama)
Think Progress found some earlier quotes from Dean on the same subject of homosexuality, such as the following from 2010:
The question I wanted to know is: “What did our forefathers have to say about it?” And I’m beginning to tell ya, I mean, for example, I went back to Thomas Jefferson. He was writing a bill to penalize sodomy by castration. George Washington would basically send forth the pipers and the drummers and he would drum them out shamefully, never to come back again. And then I began to read off state statutes, and they absolutely did not tolerate crimes against nature whatsoever. Again, all the way up until 1961, you’d go to prison for 20-21 years if you were caught in the act of sodomy. In Rhode Island, it was considered a mental illness, and folks, it is.
It appears that Dean believes that Muslims are being “raised up” by God to execute gay people because the USA has failed to imprison (or perhaps even castrate) gay people, but we should not infer from this that Dean himself favours executions.
Dean, advised by Larry Klayman, apparently believes that Maddow’s failure to tease out this subtle distinction should be worth $50 million; Klayman himself, speaking on Bachmann’s own radio show, crowed that Maddow’s career was “over”. Andy Birkey of the Minnesota Independent was also included in the original complaint; the lawsuit accused him of being a “secularist and/or atheist and gay activist with a politically left ideology who despises people of faith, including but not limited to the Congresswoman Michele Bachmann.”
Alas, however, the lawsuit is not going well; as LeftMN explains, Dean and Klayman filed a case in the District of Columbia Superior Court, only to be met with a “Special Motion to Dismiss” on the grounds that the lawsuit was a SLAPP. To counter this, Dean and Klayman withdrew the case from the Superior Court with the intention of going to a federal court instead:
But meanwhile, back before Judge Zeldon in Superior Court, the defendants were raising holy hell about all the work they’d done only to have the plaintiffs try to walk away from the action. This did not fall on deaf ears, and on April 23, Judge Zeldon re-opened the case. On May 7, the defendants moved the court for an order granting them attorneys’ fees for all of the time they’d wasted. They’d been defending the action for months, only to have Dean and YCRBYCH go all Emily Litella on them and say “Nevermind.”
Judge Zeldon agreed that this had been a monumental – and expensive – waste of time. On June 25 ordered Dean to pay $24,625.23 to MSNBC’s and Maddow’s lawyers if he wanted to dismiss the Superior Court action without prejudice.
Another problem is that the Superior Court has no jurisdiction over Birkey; and if Dean wished to sue him in Minnesota he would need to go to a state court rather than a federal court, since they both live in Minnesota.
Dean and Klayman have decided that the best way to deal with this is to impugn the judge as a “woman scorned”. As Ed Brayton observes:
Yeah, that’s the way to be taken seriously by a judge, insulting her with sexist stereotypes. I’m sure that will work out well for you.
Ed also draws attention to other passages from their legal complaint, noting that it “is full of little more than political rhetoric, not legal arguments”. The document seems to be primarily an attempt to establish a narrative of persecution for the benefit of supporters: Klayman accuses the judge of “extra-judicial bias and prejudice against me and YCR stemming from our conservative Christian advocacy against the so-called gay and lesbian agenda”, and it attacks her for failing to agree that the $24,625 fee is “inflated and fraudulent”.
Klayman’s setback with Dean comes a month after a lawsuit brought on behalf of WND‘s Joseph Farah was dismissed; Ed again:
Joseph Farah and the Worldnutdaily, represented by Larry Klayman (aka the worst lawyer in America), filed a lawsuit against Esquire for making fun of them and their birther bullshit. A federal judge has, unsurprisingly, dismissed that lawsuit and supported the First Amendment. You can read the full ruling here.
Farah wanted $120 million for Esquire‘s satirical blogpost.
It should be noted that Klayman sees no contradiction between these antics and railing against Islamic “lawfare”. Klayman was also part of the anti-“Ground Zero Mosque” bandwagon, filing a lawsuit and taking part in Pam Geller’s 10 September 2010 protest.
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