Moms for Liberty chair can sue out Kentucky educator and poet over 'lesbian threesomes' post

A lawsuit against a Kentucky Teacher of the Year who jabbed at a Moms For Liberty leader about “lesbian sex threesomes” will move ahead.

Kit Hart, a Moms For Liberty chair in Maryland, sued out teacher, Willie Edward Taylor Carver, in 2023 after a social media exchange about book bans championed by the anti-LGBTQ group.

“Just because y’all wanna be in a cult doesn’t mean we have to be in one with you,” Carver posted on X. “You can act like Puritan Martyrs to justify your unresolved shame about your secret lesbian sex threesomes. Just leave the rest of us out of it.”

That seemed to be an allusion to a national scandal involving Moms For Liberty co-founder Bridget Ziegler, who admitted to police she and husband Christian Ziegler had engaged in a threesome with a woman who in 2023 accused Christian Ziegler of rape. Authorities ultimately did not pursue charges against Christian Ziegler. Bridget Ziegler was no longer part of Moms For Liberty at the time of the scandal.

But Hart and her husband, Andrew Hart, sued Carver, alleging his post publicly accused her of adultery. Carver asked the court to dismiss the charge, saying he had made the remark after seeing Hart’s affiliation with Moms For Liberty and that he was “familiar with that group and its recent controversies.”

Carver now works at the University of Kentucky, but at the time of the post was a public school teacher in the state. He was named in 2022 as Kentucky Teacher of the Year, but resigned amid rising anti-LGBTQ rhetoric in the state shortly after receiving the honor. He has also published a number of books, including “Gay Poems for Red States,” which earned a Stonewall Award and a Rainbow Award.

U.S. District Judge Gregory Van Tatenhove, who was appointed by President George W. Bush in 2005, dismissed claims that Carver had defamed Hart be saying she wanted to “be in a cult,” and that the statement was clearly “rhetorical hyperbole.”

But he said the allegation that Hart engaged in threesomes went further.

“Here, the statement about ‘secret lesbian sex threesomes’ could plausibly be construed as a statement that Ms. Hart has engaged in adultery,” the judge wrote. “Because an allegation of adultery is defamatory per se, Ms. Hart’s defamation claim based on the ‘secret lesbian sex threesome’ statement survives a motion to dismiss.”

But the judge did dismiss claims by Andrew Hart that he was also defamed and that the term “y’all” somehow implicated him of being part of a threesome with his wife and some unnamed lesbian. He also dismissed allegations the social media post brought “unreasonable publicity” or that Carver had invaded the couple’s privacy.

However, the judge did allow the defamation case to continue based on the threesome allegation alone, and the court will continue to consider if Carver painted Hart “in a false light” with the allegation.

Carver argued that the inference of Hart being “lesbian” should not be considered defamatory as social norms no longer include public demonizing of homosexuality. The judge declined to address that, saying the chief allegation in Hart’s case involved the accusation of adultery.