(New York City) Lambda Legal has told a federal court that calling someone gay is not defamation and the court should dismiss a lawsuit by Howard K. Stern against former MSNBC host Rita Cosby.

Cosby quoted two former nannies as confirmation, but both women later said they made no such claims.

In 2007, after the book was published, Stern filed suit claiming that Cosby, in calling him gay, was being defamatory and as a result he was entitled to collect damages.

This week Lambda Legal filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York arguing that Stern’s claims of defamation rest on the flawed premise that being called gay would expose someone to public hatred and shame.

Lambda argued that the premise 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 2003 in Lawrence v. Texas the amicus brief stated.

“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 Lawrence v. Texas Lambda Legal scored a major LGBT rights victory leading to a number of other successful LGBT cases at the state level.