National anti-LGBT groups have filed suit against Lafayette, the Governor, the AG and the library, seeking to stop the planned Drag Queen Story Time planned next month.
The groups, Warriors for Christ and Special Forces of Liberty, filed documents in federal court on Wednesday. The person who filed the suit, Chris Sevier, who identifies himself as “de facto Attorney General for the Special Forces of Liberty,” is the same man who sued Alabama, Texas, Utah, Florida and Colorado last year, claiming he had married his computer in New Mexico and demanding the state recognize the union. It was his attempt to challenge the Supreme Court’s ruling legalizing gay marriage.
The original petition named Lafayette’s mayor as Tony Roswarski. Roswarski is the mayor of Lafayette, Indiana. Sevier tells KATC he filed corrected paperwork yesterday, but as of today it’s not posted on the federal clerk’s database.
You can see the original complaint by clicking here.
The suit is similar to others the same groups have filed across the country, alleging that the event should be classified as religious because it promotes a religion the group calls “secular humanism.”
The story time for three-year-olds is described in the lawsuit as “self-identified transgenders exploiting the state’s endorsement of their religious ideology in a government endorsed effort to brainwash and indoctrinate minors to a religious worldviews on sex, faith, truth, gender, morality, and marriage in a manner that excessively entangles the government with the religion of postmodern-western-individualistic-moral relativism.”
The suit claims the program “endorses transgenderism” it “relegates Christians to second-class citizens.”
The 57-page suit makes arguments against gay marriage and “transgenderism” and other LGBT terms.
It asks the court to take 29 actions in addition to stopping the story time, including:
- Declare all forms of marriage other than man-woman, as well as any “self-asserted sex-based identity narratives” as part of a religion the group identifies as “secular humanism, western postmodern moral relativism and expressive individualism.”
- Declare ideas about being transgender, gay, closeted homosexuals and that “to disagree with a self-identified liberal makes you a bigot” as “unproven faith-based assumptions and naked assertions” that are religious and related to “secular humanism.”
- Issue a permanent injunction forbidding the state and the city from every enacting any “pro-gay” policies because they “lead to Christian persecution.”
- Declare that the gay pride rainbow colored flag “is the paramount religious symbol of the LGBTQ church.”
- Declare that “all parody marriages are all equally not part of American heritage and tradition.”
Sevier also requests that the court find him “in good standing” to appear in court on behalf of the plaintiffs, “since the Tennessee Supreme Court transferred his status to inactive due to mental incapacity through fraud.” The suit states that Sevier was trying to expose the corruption of the Tennessee ethics commission – said corruption being the members’ “immense animus towards non-observers of the religion of secular humanism.”
Sevier is known for having sued Apple, claiming his mistyping of a URL in his macbook led to a pornography addiction. He’s a Vanderbilt Law grad who was licensed to practice in Tennessee, but his status was transferred to disability inactive status in 2011, records show.
When we asked Sevier about it, he said he’s petitioned Tennessee to reinstate his license and provided us with this document.
“I have been mercilessly targeted and harassed by members of the Tennessee Ethics commission because I disagree with on political and religious issues,” he says.
We’ve reached out to see if the city has been served with the suit, and we’ll update the story then.
