Posts Tagged As: Defamation

It’s Official: Being Called “Gay” Isn’t Libelous

Jim Burroway

August 14th, 2009

Thus says the Judge in the Howard K. Stern’s libel suit against an Anna Nicole Smith biographer. Rita Cosby wrote in Blonde Ambition: The Untold Story Behind Anna Nicole Smith’s Death that Stern, Smith’s former lover, was gay, which Stern considered libelous:

U.S. District Judge Denny Chin ruled the defamation case could proceed on 11 of the statements.

Chin dismissed Stern’s claims that statements implying he was homosexual were defamatory, although he acknowledged that gays and lesbians still suffered prejudice.

“I respectfully disagree that the existence of this continued prejudice leads to the conclusion that there is a widespread view of gays and lesbians as contemptible and disgraceful,” the judge said.

Lambda Legal Urges Federal Court to Reject Gay Defamation Claim

Gabriel Arana

March 13th, 2009

Lambda Legal has filed a brief in Howard K. Stern v. Rita Cosby et al., a defamation suit in which Howard K. Stern alleges he was defamed by being falsely labeled as gay. You can read more about the case and the issue here the brief is available here. The organization’s press release follows:

Saying that someone is gay is not an insult. Being identified as gay is neither bad nor shameful – in life and under the law.

NEW YORK — Today at the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, Lambda Legal filed a brief arguing that the Court should reject Howard K. Stern’s claim that being called gay is defamatory per se and entitles him to collect damages.

“Saying that someone is gay is not an insult. Being identified as gay is neither bad nor shameful – in life and under the law,” said Thomas W. Ude, Jr., Senior Staff Attorney at Lambda Legal. “At its core, defamation is about disgrace. Recognition of this defamation claim would demean gay men and lesbians by giving credence to antigay biases that New York has repeatedly rejected.”

In 2007, Howard K. Stern filed a lawsuit claiming that he was defamed by passages in a book titled Blonde Ambition: The Untold Story Behind the Death of Anna Nicole Smith. Lambda Legal’s friend-of-the-court brief argues that Stern’s first two claims of defamation rest on the flawed premise that being called gay would expose someone to public hatred and shame – a premise that is disproved daily throughout New York, including through the service of New York’s many openly gay and lesbian public officials. Validation of this type of defamation claim, and its underlying premise, would have a demeaning effect toward gay men and lesbians, similar to the effect caused by state sodomy laws before they were struck down by the US Supreme Court in Lawrence v. Texas, Lambda Legal’s 2003 landmark victory. These claims are out of step with New York law and public policy, which has repeatedly affirmed the rights and dignity of gay men and lesbians.

Thomas W. Ude, Jr., Senior Staff Attorney at Lambda Legal is handling the matter for Lambda Legal.

Is Calling Someone Gay Defamation?

Gabriel Arana

January 11th, 2009

We are trying out Gabriel Arana as a possible new contributor to Box Turtle Bulletin. Gabriel is a graduate of linguistics from Cornell University, and he is now pursuing a career in journalism. Some of you may remember him as a former patient of ex-gay therapist Dr. Joseph Nicolosi. While he’s had a personal blog for some time, he’s new to the world of LGBT community blogging. He’s an Arizona native — specifically from Nogales on the U.S./Mexico border — but he now makes his home among the bright lights of New York City. Please welcome Gabriel to the pad. — Jim Burroway.

With the LGBT legal community’s eyes set on fighting for marriage rights, another important issue that reinforces negative attitudes toward gays has gone largely unmentioned: the law concerning defamation and false accusations of homosexuality.

Rulings vary by jurisdiction over whether it is defamatory to out someone falsely, reflecting the fragmented evolution of social and legal attitudes in different areas of the country.

Examples include the case of a Los Angeles judge who awarded Tom Cruise $10 million in a libel suit against a man who claimed Cruise was his lover. Other courts have ruled the opposite, including Boston judge Nancy Gertner, who in 2004 ruled that “a statement implying that an individual is a homosexual is hardly capable of a defamatory meaning.”

The issue here — and its significance for LGBT policy — is perhaps more easily understood by analogy to a schoolyard fight. If a kid calls another kid gay, should the teacher tell him to stop or, believing that there is nothing wrong with being gay and being identified as such, ignore the negative consequences that arise from the teasing?

Some background: According to libel (printed statements) and slander (typically oral statements) law, a plaintiff must prove the following in order to establish defamation:

  • that the information reached a third party;
  • that the person in question is identifiable from the information;
  • that the publisher is at fault;
  • and — most importantly — that the publication of the information caused harm or “[tended] to hurt the reputation of another so as to lower him in the estimation of the community.”

There are two countervailing positions to consider:

1. Courts should not recognize defamation lawsuits based on the (false) accusation of homosexuality.

This is perhaps the goal — to live in a society in which being gay is a neutral descriptor that has neither a positive nor negative connotation. Defamation lawsuits based on gay accusations enshrine the perception of homosexuality as something bad and further reinforce this belief. Courts are not in a position to define homosexuality as a stain on someone’s reputation.

2. Courts should recognize such lawsuits until the social mores of the society change.

No one wants to wait for social norms to change, but the standard for harm is subjective: whether or not calling someone gay “[hurts] the reputation” of a person depends on how the community feels about homosexuality. The function of the Court is not to determine whether a certain attribute is desirable or not, but merely establish that being labeled as such leads to diminished reputation/harm. Dismissing such suits leaves plaintiffs who have lost their jobs or suffered other damages with no recourse.

Of course the question of whether people who actually are gay should be outed or not (e.g. as in the case of gay politicians like Mark Foley who pass anti-gay legislation) is not a defamation issue — the one surefire defense against defamation is that the published information is true.

In any scenario, the solution to this problem from a policy standpoint involves changing public opinion, a task taken up by a good number of activist organizations. The more thorny issue is what the strategy among legal advocates should be. This may or may not be a case in which the law must trail — and not lead — social progress.

    

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