The Yale Law Journal Online has just published Lawrence Meets Libel: Squaring Constitutional Norms with Sexual-Orientation Defamation, an essay by Anthony Michael Kreis. Kreis identifies a trend in defamation law: many state statutes and judicial opinions continue to treat false allegations of homosexuality as actionable libel despite the growing acceptance of homosexuality nationwide. He argues that, “[w]hile defamation law functions as a legitimate governmental mechanism for vindicating harm to one’s reputation, it cannot constitutionally do so if it irrationally intertwines state action with class-based animus.” In his view, “recent sexual-orientation jurisprudence . . . stands for the clear proposition that government-backed stigmatization of gay and lesbian people is inconsistent with the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.”