By Brody Levesque | MONTCLAIR, NEW JERSEY -- A same-sex New Jersey couple plans to sue Loudon County Virginia Supervisor Eugene Delgaudio's anti-gay advocacy group, Public Advocate Of The United States, for using an altered version of the couple's copyrighted engagement picture.
Brian Edwards and Tom Privitere were shocked to learn that their picture, photoshopped to replace the original background, had been used in separate political attack mailers against Republican candidates in at least two Colorado legislative races. According to The Denver Post, the mailers targeted Republicans Jean White and Jeff Hare, both of whom lost in Colorado's Tuesday primary elections.
According to an article published in The Atlantic magazine Thursday, GOP Representative Randy Baumgardner and GOP Senator Jean White were in a heated political contest for Colorado's State Senate District 8. The hotly contested campaign got uglier when Delgaudio's conservative and vehemently anti-gay Public Advocate of the United States got involved by creating and funding anti-White mailers, painting the Senator as pro-gay. [She ended up losing to Baumgardner.]
The Denver Post reported that Senator White, who has a lesbian niece as well as a gay nephew, and who was a crucial GOP vote in the legislative efforts to allow same-sex Colorado couples equal rights and access to civil unions, was targeted by Delgaudio's mailer for her votes on that issue.
Public Advocate was recently designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, thanks in part to Delgaudio's vitriol regarding same-sex couples and the LGBTQ community in general.
In a statement released Thursday, Edwards and Privitere said;
Words cannot express the overwhelming gratitude we feel at the outpouring of support and love we have received in the last 24 hours. It has been a whirlwind of emotions.
What has occurred is unjust and we promise that we will do what we can to make sure it doesn’t occur to other couples in the future, regardless of sexual orientation. To provide you with a bit of an update and to correct some of the misspoken statements in the media as of late…
The stolen image was from our engagement photo shoot and not our wedding. The photograph was taken by the talented Kristina Hill of Kristina Hill Photography.
Despite the rumors that we have hired lawyers – we haven’t – yet. In fact, we have reached out to GLAAD and have spoke with representatives at LAMBDA Legal a couple of times today.
It is our hope that LAMBDA Legal, “the nation’s oldest and largest legal organization working for the civil rights of lesbians, gay men, and people with HIV/AIDS,” will take up our cause.
The Denver Post notes that Delgaudio refuses to apologise, claiming that even though he's infringed on the copyrighted image, he can utilise the image as he pleases alledging that other individuals and groups have supposedly done the same with his group's [Public Advocate] copyrighted images.
"We are a non-profit and make no money from any photos, postings, references, parodies, street theater or educational materials. Other groups make fair use of our materials or 2,000 photos from our website under these broad principles of political education and we acknowledge a limited use of many of our own materials, by other groups, under parody, some fairly strong critical attacks from our political opposition on our efforts as part of a robust debate.Other groups make fair use of our materials or 2,000 photos from our website under these broad principles of political education," Delgaudio said.
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1 comments:
When I first read about the photo being touched up and altered, I thought they meant their images were altered. Imagine my amazement that everything else was altered and their personal visages were intact and recognizable. I suspect a good lot of money is going to result from the likely lawsuit.
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