A man in Arlington, VA who runs his own video duplication service has a company policy that he reserves the right not to duplicate any videos that violate his “Christian and ethical values.” Unfortunately, such a policy violates Arlington County’s anti-discrimination law, and when a woman wanted to duplicate some gay-themed videos (not porn, as far as we can tell) and he would not copy them, she complained to the Human Rights Commission and he was ordered to provide the service. Now he is suing the officials on the Commission on the grounds that Virginia state law does not allow for sexual orientation to be added to anti-discrimination laws.
We think that Christian video duplicators could be a phenomenon. Recently we were in a rural town in central Florida where we had to have some videos duplicated, and we found the one place in town where we could have it done, which was in a little shed behind this family’s house. We pulled into their driveway behind their van covered with “Bush/Cheney 2004” stickers and walked inside. Immediately the woman helping us (who was very sweet) began talking about “my church this, my church that,” perhaps sensing we could use a little bit of help from Jesus to straighten us out on our path. Fortunately our videos had no gay kissing or anything in them or we perhaps could have ended up in a similar situation as the woman in Virginia.
Christian businessman ordered to duplicate gay video sues [Washington Blade]
Arielle
I had a similar experience involving a short film that I produced at school a few semesters ago. I was attending Los Angeles Valley College (located in the San Fernando Valley, the porn capital of the world) and I took my film to one of two suggested processing places. My film was a short PSA about marraige rights and at the most there was some ladies hugging ladies and possibly some kissing (oh my!). My prof. warned me that YALE FILM AND VIDEO (10555 Victory Blvd.
North Hollywood, CA 91606, (800) 955-YALE) was a “family” owned and operated business and might not take kindly to my film topic. I took the risk and went with Yale because it was cheaper. If there’s anything really wrong with your film these places tend to call you to break the news to you. I never received any sort of call so I went to pick up my film. When I got there Yale told me that all of my film where completely blank and that there was absolutely no image. I began to freak out because if that was the case I had wasted an entire semester and would fail. So I get to class to screen the supposedly absolutely blank film and yes, some frames were a little underexposed, but the rest was perfect. YALE gave me a hard time just because I’m a homo who made a positive homo film. Screw Yale and please feel free to call them and tell them how lovely they are (800) 955-YALE. You can’t keep a queer down.
Arielle
I had a similar experience involving a short film that I produced at school a few semesters ago. I was attending Los Angeles Valley College (located in the San Fernando Valley, the porn capital of the world) and I took my film to one of two suggested processing places. My film was a short PSA about marraige rights and at the most there was some ladies hugging ladies and possibly some kissing (oh my!). My prof. warned me that YALE FILM AND VIDEO (10555 Victory Blvd.
North Hollywood, CA 91606, (800) 955-YALE) was a “family” owned and operated business and might not take kindly to my film topic. I took the risk and went with Yale because it was cheaper. If there’s anything really wrong with your film these places tend to call you to break the news to you. I never received any sort of call so I went to pick up my film. When I got there Yale told me that all of my film where completely blank and that there was absolutely no image. I began to freak out because if that was the case I had wasted an entire semester and would fail. So I get to class to screen the supposedly absolutely blank film and yes, some frames were a little underexposed, but the rest was perfect. YALE gave me a hard time just because I’m a homo who made a positive homo film. Screw Yale and please feel free to call them and tell them how lovely they are (800) 955-YALE. You can’t keep a queer down.