Andrew Shirvell has been ordered to pay
$4.5 million to openly gay former University of Michigan student
government president Chris Armstrong.
A jury on Thursday agreed with
Armstrong, who graduated in 2011, in his defamation suit against
Shirvell.
Shirvell, an alum of UofM, protested
the 2010 election of Armstrong as the school's first openly gay
student body president. He attacked Armstrong on the Internet, at
his home and at university events. At
his now private blog Chris
Armstrong Watch, he accused the student of preying on
impressionable freshman and of being “Satan's representative on the
student assembly,” and labeled Armstrong a Nazi, a racist, a liar
and an elitist.
Shirvell was fired from his post as
state assistant attorney general over his actions.
“It's not just a victory for me, but
for so many others,” Armstrong is quoted as saying by the Detroit
Free Press. “I think of all of the people who are bullies
outside of a strong supportive environment like I had at [UofM]. I
think it's a strong statement about what will be tolerated.”
Shirvell called the ruling
“outrageous.”
“The whole case is about politics,”
he
told the paper. “Every conservative Christian in the nation
should be scared from this. This is the radical homosexual lobby
trying to make an example out of me. Every conservative Christian in
the nation should know that they are going to come after you if you
object to their lifestyle, that they are going to crucify you in the
public arena.”
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