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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (March 4, 2005)
march 4. 2005 - nnTTHÜTTTïnews M isappropriated G rooms Conservative group swipes wedding photo by Sarah Dougher 1 After recovering from their initial shock at such egregious misrepresentation, Hansen and Raymen engaged lawyer Christopher Wolf, a partner in the New York-based law firm Proskauer Rose who lives in Waslyngton, D.C. He notes the couple “did not volunteer to be models for a 2005 right-wing hate campaign, and never would have consented to having their images plastered in an ad of any kind, much less the one USA Next chose to run. USA Next has violated the law and must take responsibility for the consequences. Tort law is quite clear that USA Next acted illegally.” Wolf has sent USA Next a letter demand ing that it immediately stop using photos of the couple and that it publicly apologize for the ongoing harm it is causing. “As our clients contemplate their full legal remedies, we are writing to demand that you immedi ately cease and desist using any photograph of our clients and that you publicly apologize to them for the use you already have made, and the harm you have already caused,” he wrote. Hansen and Raymen are contemplating further legal action. “The USA Next ad communicates the false message that gay marriages generally, and our clients specifically, are the antithesis of supporting American troops during wartime,” Wolf says. “Gay marriage, and our clients’ ceremony, have nothing to do with support of the troops. Our clients are patriotic Americans who strongly sup port our service members.” “We never signed up to be Harry and Louise for a hate mongering group,” Raymen says, referring to the fictional couple used in television commercials to scuttle then- first lady Hillary Clinton’s health care proposal. “USA Next is illegally using our This ad, which appeared briefly on the American Spectator Web photo to portray us as a threat site and was designed to draw the ire of “liberal bloggers,” has to American values. How since been pulled. would any citizen like having ed the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth cam their image stolen and broadcast for the purpose paign that sullied the reputation of then- of tarring our troops and suggesting that you’re un-American.7” presidential candidate John Kerry. The national attention on this story has Ex-Marine Chris LaCivita, who wrote the Swift Boat commercials, is coordinating the ranged from coverage in USA Today and The Los anti-AARP media campaign. Rick Reed, Angeles Times to CNN’s Judy Wcxxlruff and whose Virginia-based ad agency Stevens MSNBC’s Chris Matthews. In addition, the ad Reed Curcio & Potholm handled production has appeared on blog sites all over the Inter on those ads, will be again collaborating with net. This coverage allows the ad to creep, like LaCivita and Swift Boat PR agency Creative a virus, into other media and into environ ments (such as the op-ed page of The New York Response Concepts of Arlington, Va. “We are going to be revealing areas where Times) where it would not normally appear. In the AARP is out of touch with a large num some significant media outlets such as USA ber of their members, including the issue of Today, no mention was made of the illegal use marriage,” Charlie Jarvis, USA Next’s chief of the Hansen-Raymen wedding photo. As same-sex couples in Multnomah County executive, said in a statement. “We will engage AARP with an aggressive campaign celebrate their anniversaries this month, their to educate the people about where they real legal status is still in limbo. This uncertainty ly stand on the issues and how out of touch does not, however, diminish the symbolic they are with the large majority of their own power that their unions have in the demand for civil rights. This power is nowhere clearer in members.” Jarvis took the helm at USA Next after the misappropriation of the Hansen-Raymen working as the executive vice president of wedding photo by USA Next; it is just that in Focus on the Family, a conservative Christian this case, its power was used to spread fear, lies and homophobia. JH group headed by James Dobson. ike many gay Portlanders, Steven Hansen and Rick Raymen were married last year in Multnomah County. --------- ............ Their ............ image even graced the cover of Just Out I—cover mod els for the gay marriage revolution. A year later they woke to find their wed ding picture being used in a homophobic advertisement condemning the American Association of Retired Persons. It seems that a conservative organization called USA Next, which presents itself as “an alternative to the liberal AARP,” used Hansen and Raymen’s wedding photo to link the AARP with same- sex marriage. Despite the fact that the AARP actually has no position on the issue, USA Next needed a wedge to portray the AARP as ridiculously liberal. By polarizing its intended audience, USA Next aims to gain support for President Bush’s Social Security plan. 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