> Didn't Liberace sue a newspaper for libel when they said he was gay... and then win. Yes. However, then as now, the truth is an absolute defence to a claim

> Didn't Liberace sue a newspaper for libel when they said he was gay... and then win. Yes. However, then as now, the truth is an absolute defence to a claim of defamation. Had they shown that Liberace was gay, they'd have won the trial. The issue was that the newspaper in question (the Mirror) never tried to claim that Liberace was actually gay; instead they tried to claim that when they wrote that he was "a deadly, winking, sniggering, snuggling, chromium-plated, scent-impregnated, luminous, quivering, giggling, fruit-flavoured, mincing, ice-covered heap of mother love" that the word "fruit" was not a reference to the then-common slang term for homosexuals, but was just, you know...a word. And that the journalist who wrote it has no idea that the slang term even existed, and in any case whatever was written was just the jounalist's opinion, and shouldn't have been interpreted as a statement of fact, since, obviously, the author didn't really think Liberace was gay. It wasn't a very good defence, and the jury didn't buy it.