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ABSTRACT
There is a recent and growing trend of primarily American conservative and religious leaders travelling internationally to propagate and incite anti-LGBT animus, hatred, and in many cases, state sanctioned or tolerated violence. As it currently stands, the human rights framework is inadequate in holding these anti-LGBT extremists accountable for their actions. This Note will detail the deficiencies of the current legal avenues: hate speech and incitement in international, regional, and domestic venues, and litigation in the United States under the Alien Tort Statute. Ultimately finding the current regime inapplicable to the circumstances, this Note will propose a new framework designed to hold these and other actors legally accountable through a convention on hate speech, including the extraterritorial application of existing human rights laws to private actors, and a requirement that states provide civil remedies for international victims domestically.
I. Introduction
On January 26, 2011, Uganda's first openly gay man1 and LGBT2 rights activist, David Kato, was bludgeoned to death with a hammer in his home.3 His murder occurred less than a month after win· ning an injunction preventing a Ugandan tabloid, Rolling Stone, from further identifying and exposing, or outing, LGBT individuals.4 In October of 2010, the tabloid featured Kato and others' pictures under the words "Hang Them," on the cover.5
While some have connected his death to the injunction or the tabloid outing,6 Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG), a gay rights group that Kato helped establish, places the blame on another source. According to fellow SMUG founder, Val Kalende, "David's death is a result of the hatred planted in Uganda by U.S. evangelicals in 2009. . . . The Ugandan government and the so-called U.S. evangelicals must take responsibility for David's blood."7 She refers specifically to the work of American evangelicals, most notably Scott Lively.8
While most would find a man who believes that "[h]omosexuality gave us Adolph Hitler"9 to be extreme, pastor Scott Lively has incited hatred, legislation, and vigilante violence against LGBT individuals in multiple African and Eastern European Countries. Almost fifteen years ago, in 2002, Lively first targeted Uganda as ripe for his anti-LGBT message at an anti-pornography conference, where his warning that Western culture was eroding Ugandan independence through the infiltration of homosexuals was well received.10 Later, in March...