Yesterday, the team I lead at the ERLC posted a video on our website about the way humans should think about animals. Bottom line up front: this video does not reflect our views on the subject. It was an accident and an honest mistake but an embarrassing one nonetheless, and I’d like to apologize for allowing this video to post and for the understandable confusion it created.
How did this happen? This video was one of hundreds of hours of videos we capture each year at the March for Life. After interviews like this are recorded, a video technician we contract with edits the videos, applies some graphics, and uploads it to a private Vimeo page for ERLC staff to then review. At this point, my communications team combs through the hundreds of videos to determine whether they would be fitting to publish (a process that takes months). Often, we’ll find the videos useful and helpful, and we’ll post them online. Occasionally, though, we’ll review a video and choose not to publish it because it doesn’t align with our mission. In this case, this week, one of the members of my team accidentally posted this video which had not yet been reviewed, never would have been approved, and never should have been posted. It had been uploaded to the Vimeo page for review months previously, so to some it appeared as if the video had been public for quite some time. In actuality, it was not accessible to anyone but the ERLC staff until it was posted online this week. This was a careless, but nonetheless honest mistake, and I along with my entire team will make sure a mistake like this never happens again.
To be clear, the views in that video do not reflect the views of ERLC. We believe what the Bible says about the unique dignity of human life. Only humans are created in the image of God. Only humans were described by Scripture as having been sculpted by God from the dust of the ground and knit together in the womb. Only humans are the objects of Christ’s sacrificial love on the cross. This is a particularly embarrassing mistake for me because I just finished writing a book on the image of God that makes the exact opposite argument from the one seen in the video.
This, of course, is not an excuse but merely the explanation I believe is owed. This was a public mistake, and I believe it deserves an equally public explanation and apology. This was an instance of clumsiness that led to understandable confusion. It caused people of good will to ask reasonable questions. Ultimately, this is my responsibility, and I apologize. This won’t happen again.
Daniel Darling
Vice President for Communications
