Three teenage boys appeared in the Constitutional Court yesterday in a bid to overturn this country's first ruling on a child defamation case.

The Pretoria High Court found in 2006 that the three - from Hoërskool Waterkloof, in Pretoria - had defamed their deputy headmaster by portraying him as a homosexual.

Four years ago, Hennie le Roux, then 15, took photographs of his headmaster, Christo Bekker, and of his deputy, Louis Dey, and superimposed their faces onto images of naked gay body builders.

Le Roux concocted the bizarre photograph and sent it to his friend, Christiaan Gildenhuys, then 17. Their classmate, Reinhardt van Rensburg, then also 17, pinned it onto the school's notice board, causing consternation.

A seething Dey took great offence at the rhyme "Dey is gay", which spread like wildfire around the school.

In court yesterday, the boys' high-profile advocate, Gilbert Marcus, said: "They intended nothing less and nothing more than to make a joke. A reasonable person would not take it seriously.

"There is a huge gulf between what Dey and the boys say. The boys say the [rhyme] 'Dey is Gay' was used only because of the rhyme," he said.

He maintained that the Supreme Court of Appeal, which upheld the ruling by the Pretoria High Court, was "out of touch" with the lives of school children.

Marcus had the court in fits of giggles when he said: "My nickname was 'Carcass' at school, not because I was a slab of rotting meat, but because it rhymed with Marcus ... it is juvenile humour and should not be subjected to litigation."

Marcus also criticised the Supreme Court of Appeal, which awarded Dey R45000 in total damages from the boys, because, he said, it failed to take into account freedom of expression.

"We give latitude for political speech. We must give latitude to the speech of children," he said.

"It would not be reasonable to give constitutional recourse."

Anthony Stein, of the Freedom of Expression Institute, argued that "children have the right to be careless in their expressive acts".

"They had no idea what they were doing," said Stein, adding that the boys should be punished in an appropriate environment, not in a court.

But Dey's advocate, Julian du Plessis, argued that the former deputy headmaster's standing had been destroyed by his being portrayed as "gay, homosexual and masturbating".

"When he gets up on the [school] podium, they don't see him. They see this picture," he said.

Justice Edwin Cameron, who is openly gay, challenged this, saying: "Any reasonable reader would have seen it was not Dr Dey ... the defamation would then fall away."

But Du Plessis said the boys knew their actions were wrong, citing evidence at the trial, when one of the boys conceded that they would not subject their parents or the "dominee" to such treatment.