One of the secrets of advertising is fakery, finding people who look like oh, a lawyer, a MILF, or someone with embarrassing body odor, and having them pose or deliver lines convincingly. "Real people" casting is an art, though there’s an implicit understanding that the kid saying how great Brand X cereal tastes may not really eat it at home. 

But when it comes to  political advertising, shouldn’t people–either "real" or actors–who believe in the issue at hand be doing the gig?  Remember the National Organization for Marriage commercial and the leaked casting tapes showing the audition process which were eventually pulled fromYouTube by NOM claiming copyright infringement?

And this brings us to Maine, where the campaign to preserve marriage equality has begun. The state’s upcoming ballot measure #1 seeks to overthrow Maine’s marriage equality law, passed earlier this year by the state legislature.

Stand4MarriageMaine is the anti-marriage rights side, and they featured the above photo on their website–until the clever folks at GoodAsYou.com did some investigating:

[T]his image is simply a stock photo that the marriage opponents purchased from istockphoto.com. But like it or not, these two adults and two minors are being used to represent one side in a major social debate.

So we got to wondering: By using this photo in this way, is Stand4MarriageMaine in violation of their contract with istockphoto? Does this implied endorsement of a social issue go beyond the terms of their deal with the stock photo provider? And in fact, does this usage by the "protect children"/"protect marriage" crowd actually do the exact opposite when it comes to protecting the reputations of the models?

AsGoodAsYou looked at istockphoto’s terms of service and

contacted both the photographer and istockphoto about this. 

Guess what? The "nuclear family" photo was pulled, replaced by

(very lily white) family imagery for the sake of discrimination, just not in a way that so fully looks like a direct endorsement.

Makes you wonder: Couldn’t the S4MM campaign find actual people, citizens of Maine, to represent their anti-equality stance?

The Protect Marriage Equality/No on 1 campaign has certainly been able to find Mainers willing to speak up about the importance of marriage equality!