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LEGAL Court: Anti-LGBTQ Pastor’s Claims Not Defamatory Brooklyn church leader hit with lawsuit after falsely accusing member of being gay BY ARTHUR S. LEONARD Is a false charge of homosexuality defamatory? A lawsuit involving a Brooklyn pastor who drove out a church member by falsely labeling him as a gay man who watched porn on church computers prompted a New York court to revisit that question. The case arose from a dispute between Pastor Jean Renald Maurice of the Gethsemane Seventh Day Adventist Church in Brooklyn and one of the elders of the church, Pierre Delor Laguerre. The court’s opinion by Justice Sheri Roman does not make clear what their dispute was about, but Laguerre’s complaint reports that Pastor Maurice stated that “if the plaintiff ‘did not submit to him,’ Pastor Maurice would ‘crumble’ the plaintiff.” Maurice allegedly threatened to tell the congregation that Laguerre is a homosexual who used the church’s computer to watch gay pornography in order to get the congregants to vote to remove Laguerre from his position as elder and to cancel his membership in the church, which is located at A pastor at Gethsemane Seventh Day Adventist Church in Brooklyn allegedly falsely accused a church member of being gay and watching gay porn on church computers. 357 Empire Boulevard. Laguerre allegedly refused to submit to Pastor Maurice, who carried out his threat by making these statements during a congregational meeting attended by about 300 people. The ensuing uproar resulted in Laguerre being removed GOOGLE MAPS as an elder and expelled from membership. Presumably, the position of church elder was not compensated because Laguerre did not allege in his complaint that he was harmed fi - nancially by Pastor Maurice’s statement. ➤ DEFAMATION, continued on p.15 Sign up for low or no-cost health insurance today! !"# $ November 1, 2020 – January 31, 2021 GetCoveredNYC 311 Text CoveredNYC to 877877 Visit nyc.gov/GetCoveredNYC Not eligible for insurance? �� January 14 - January 27, 2 14 021 | GayCityNews.com /GetCoveredNYC /GayCityNews.com