Vancouver School trustees Ken Denike and Sophia Woo have hired a lawyer to stop the US National Organization of Marriage from using interview footage in a campaign against gay marriage. They say they were not aware that their interview, in which they expressed the need for better scrutiny of school resources, would be used by the organization.
Denike and Woo agreed to be interviewed about how more attention and vigilance needs to be paid to links that students have access to, after Out in Schools posted a link on its website to a video which they deemed inappropriate. The link in question was for HIM (Health Initiative for Men), which features provocative HIV/AIDS awareness advertisements that Woo and Denike considered “adult videos.”
Their lawyer, Jonathan Tweedale, insists his clients are being unlawfully represented. “Had you or your videographer disclosed to my clients that the interview footage was going to be used to further the agenda of the National Organization for Marriage my clients would have refused to provide the interview at the onset,” he wrote in a letter obtained by the Vancouver Sun. “My clients have suffered and continue to suffer damage as a result of your misrepresentations and the false and misleading portrayal of my clients in the unauthorized video.”
Despite demanding the video be removed, it is still currently viewable on the Marriage Anti-Defamation Association (MADA) website.
I’m relieved Denike and Woo have taken legal action to remove themselves from the anti-gay campaign but can’t help but feel they deserve this hassle. Out in Schools does a lot for BC youth, and school trustees causing such a fuss about links (which at the end of the day, aren’t hurting anybody/aren’t anything these kids aren’t already having wet dreams about), is in my opinion, pointless. Maybe they need to learn the lesson that when you cause drama, you get drama.
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