A Gay Couple Is Suing the GOP After Their Wedding Photo Was Used in an Attack Ad

‘To See Our Picture on Our Wedding Day Being Used in Such a Vile Manner, It’s Taken That Special Moment and Ruined It’

A same-sex couple is suing the Tennessee Republican Party after it paid for a mailer attacking the Democratic candidate who happened to have officiated their wedding – and using their wedding photograph in the mailer. 

“After being together for nine years, we have a bond,” Shane Morgan told WSMV about his husband, Landon. An Air Force veteran who suffers from PTSD, Shane says the incident has made things worse for him.

“To see our picture on our wedding day being used in such a vile manner, it’s taken that special moment and ruined it,” Morgan said. “Ruined it. Very hurt. Very hurt.”

Democrat Gayle Jordan, running for State Senate in a special election on Tuesday, had posted a photo of her with the grooms on their wedding day to Facebook. On it, she wrote, “Doing my part to destroy the fabric of American society.” Which, as almost anyone knows, clearly mocks the decades of attacks anti-gay conservatives have waged on the very idea of same-sex couples marrying.

But the Tennessee GOP decided the personal photo was fair game – as was Jordan’s jest.

In a mailer sent to Tennessee voters, the GOP used Shane and Landon’s wedding day photo, with their arms around Jordan, and the words: “Liberal Gayle Jordan will ‘destroy the fabric of American society.’ Take her word for it.”

A representative for the Tennessee GOP “said the comment is very serious, even if made in jest, and the mailer doesn’t have anything to do with the gay couple or have anything negative to say about them.”

Many would disagree.

“It’s just sad anyone would use someone’s wedding photos, which represent one of the happiest days in their lives, to attack somebody,” Chris Sanders of the Tennessee Equality Project told WSMV. “It’s fine to hit the candidate, but it’s not right to sling mud on others in the process. That’s what we’re seeing here. It is just so emotionally unsettling to see your wedding photo, that happy day, used in that context.”

LGBTQ Nation notes that “Jordan has faced repeated attacks because she is an atheist. ‘I just feel like her views are radical,’ said her opponent Shane Reeves, who is a Christian and a Republican.”