I read about a lot of defamation claims, both threatened and actually filed as lawsuits, and most of them seem pretty bad. As a broad overview, in order to successfully sue for defamation, you have to prove that someone (1) published information about you (2) that is untrue, (3) that the person knew or should have known that it was not true, and (4) that this harmed you in a tangible (i.e. expressible in a dollar amount) way. This is not the precise definition of defamation in all U.S. jurisdictions, but it’s a start. The idea is to balance people’s rights of free speech with people’s rights against conduct that directly causes them harm.

Peter LaBarbera, a gentleman who apparently gets offended about gay people for a living, had an unpleasant experience on a college campus not too long ago. He was giving a speech to a rather large crowd on a campus in Ohio, when most of the crowd abruptly stood up and walked out in protest. It turns out that the protest was planned in advance, and quite frankly, it strikes me as a reasonably effective method of protest—certainly better than yelling or heckling.

According to some observers, or at least some writers who wrote about the event, LaBarbera allegedly said something to the effect of “You’re leaving? Are you effing kidding?” as people filed out of the room.

That’s the part he thinks is defamatory. That someone accused him of using the word “effing.” Last time I checked, “effing” is what you say to avoid saying a swear word.

The defamation claim was sent to a writer for Salon. It seems to be ahead of the curve, as defamation claims go, because it actually identifies a specific statement alleged to be defamatory, but that’s only part of the battle. It will be interesting to see if the claim is actually false—mind you, to defeat a defamation claim, a statement does not have to be precise. It only has to be basically correct, but more true than “truthy.” Then he has to prove that he suffered damages. As in, his career was ruined because no one wants to do business with an anti-gay activist who almost but doesn’t quite use bad language (provided that he can prove that this was a reasonably foreseeable outcome).

It will be fun to see what happens.

Photo credit: William Morris Design of the Letter F converted from a font “Goudy Initialen” by Dieter Steffmann, uploaded by kuba [Public domain, CC0 1.0], via Openclipart.