He found an especially receptive audience in Ugandan government officials, and helped pass anti-gay legislation which called for the death penalty for homosexual acts. Of course, he later claimed to be against such a bill, and claimed he had nothing to do with it. Unfortunately, some folks in Uganda saw it differently, and the Center for Constitutional Rights filed a federal lawsuit against Lively on behalf of a gay rights group, Sexual Minorities Uganda, under the Alien Tort Statute. The suit accused Lively of violating international law by conspiring to persecute the Ugandan LGBT community, portraying their movement as “pedophilic” and “genocidal”, and linking it “to the Nazis and Rwandan murderers”.