The Peter Zenger Freedom Society
WORST JUDGE OF THE YEAR 2013
MICHAEL A. PONSOR, U.S. DISTRICT COURT, SPRINGFIELD, MA
Judge Ponsor’s 2013 conduct in the Sexual Minorities Uganda v. Scott Lively case can only be viewed as blood raw judicial activism on steroids. On March 14, 2012, the Center for Constitutional Rights filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of “Sexual Minorities Uganda,” an organization for LGBTI groups in Uganda, against Springfield’s Abiding Truth Ministries President, Scott Lively. The suit alleges that Lively’s religiously motivated speech on gay political issues in Uganda constituted human rights crimes in violation of international law. Ponsor’s August, 2013 ruling on Lively’s motion to dismiss is a frightening example of legalistic arrogance, willfully defiant of recent rulings of the U.S. Supreme Court and intentionally destructive of two basic American freedoms guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution: freedom of speech and the free exercise of religion. The faux mask of impartiality and limited power is ripped off, not by an enemy but by the self-satisfied wielder of power himself who boasted publicly last June that he has come to understand that he is the unelected and self-appointed legislator of all mankind. Worse yet, he informed us during Law Day celebrations last May that he “is ashamed of America.” A heady combination indeed: a self-loathing American without restraint as an unelected international legislator. No wonder he seems so at home in the legal fantasyland of evanescent international law at the expense of the civil and constitutional rights of a journeyman local pastor who treads the lonely and often inhospitable path taken by many of his itinerant Bible carrying American forbearers. How ironic this self-aggrandizing solon of Springfield penned a book entitled “The Hanging Judge” --- the hanging judge indeed, sentencing not only Pastor Lively but the First Amendment to civil death as well. His actions are far more poisonous to the Republic than A&E’s tiff with Duck Dynasty’s patriarch, a mere private dustup. Ponsor’s legalistic hemlock is a powerful concoction imposed by government and is intended to eviscerate the constitutional freedoms of millions when exercised in ways that he and his like-minded secular sybarites and intellectual poseurs find personally offensive. And perhaps more disturbing are those personal springs of his animism he has kept secret from the litigant Lively and the public who pay him; springs which undercut the possibility of any judicial impartiality in the SMUG v. Lively case: his deep and troubling family immersion in homosexual conduct and apparent toleration of pedophilia. Of his 3 wives, the first was both a radical and involved with black feminist lesbian activities; the second turned lesbian after a short term marriage with Ponsor (leaving two young children adrift in the troubling wreckage) and later married her female law partner turned family court judge; and the third (and current) sought and kept employment with the controversial owner and director of a small last resort boarding school for disturbed teens who had twice been caught and convicted for molesting underage girls. That school director even publicly used Mrs. Ponsor as a human shield to deflect criticism after he had been arrested and convicted the second time in 2002. And to top off the secret life: a lesbian daughter actively living a homosexual lifestyle in the manner of her mother (the second Mrs. Ponsor); yes, the mother who showered accolades on gay marriage in The Gay & Lesbian Review (Sept/Oct 2009). Impartial you say? Mr. Ponsor should quit the bench, reimburse Pastor Lively for the expenses and losses he has incurred on account of the breach of his constitutional rights, and peddle his corrosive constitutional Drano at his own expense. Enough hypocrisy!
In Ponsor’s own words:
“Remarks on Being Sworn In,” March 14, 1994, 216 Western New England Law Review [Vol. 16 Issue No. 2, page 215], delivered at Symphony Hall, Springfield
• “We have a proud, vibrant gay and lesbian community.”
“U.S. District Court Judge Michael Ponsor Focuses on Equality During Law Day Ceremonies in Springfield,” Buffy Spencer, The Republican, May 1, 2013
• Ponsor expounded that “(It) amazes me and makes me ashamed of my country” that racist acts could have happened during his lifetime.
“Judge Michael Ponsor Pens The Hanging Judge,” Stephanie Barry, The Republican, June 2, 2013
• “At some point I realized that judges are the unappointed legislators of mankind, and what we do is just as creative.”
The public record:
“Inexplicably Mild Sentence,” June 21, 1995, The Hartford Courant
• “The president of a school for emotionally disturbed students has received a suspended one year sentence…in a sexual assault case involving a teenage student…It raises questions of whose best interest school officials are looking out for – Mr. Bratter’s or the students…he repeatedly assaulted her at his Salisbury home…he will be required to do 500 hours of service and donate $50,000..It is unimaginable that Mr. Bratter would have been welcomed back at John Dewey Academy if he hadn’t been its owner.”
“Tom Bratter Responds to Exclusion” by Independent Educational Consultants Association, Woodbury Reports Archives, September 2002, Issue #97
• “If this academy (John Dewey) is so controversial and toxic, why do professionals with doctorates who have college teaching experience remain at John Dewey…Nancy Coiner Ph.D, a Rhodes Scholar, has taught at Middlebury College, Stanford University, Smith and Mount Holyoke (Bratter’s emphases) before joining our faculty four years ago”
“Teacher in abuse suit defends actions at Dewey Academy,” Shelley Murphy, Globe Staff, The Boston Globe, September 14, 2004
• “…The suit has also cast a spotlight on Bratter (the founder/owner), who has been accused in the past of having inappropriate sexual contact with two female students…After being charged with indecent assault and battery on a 17 year-old in Great Barrington in 1999, Bratter pleaded guilty to indecent assault and battery in June 2002.”
“Smith Grad Tapped as Family Judge,” The Republican, February 7, 2008
• “…The day before Fidnick was nominated by Patrick, Fidnick’s spouse, Amherst lawyer Carol Booth, gave $1,000 to U.S. Senator Barack Obama…”
“Breaking the Silence: Two Women Take a First Step,” Equal Times 2, no. 35, March 13-25, 1978, Laura Sperazi (Ponsor wife #1) and Barbara Smith, part of Professor Catharine A. MacKinnon’s feminist research papers donated by her estate to Harvard’s Schlesinger Library.
BREAKING STORY:
MassResistance,
http://www.massresistance.org/, December 20, 2013: Federal judge who ruled against Pastor Scott Lively did not disclose outrageous background…
