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Thursday’s full-bore attack on Jason Kenney’s record of anti-gay marriage activism didn’t just come from the NDP.

Derek Fildebrandt, leader of the new Freedom Conservative Party, pitched in without restraint.

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Fildebrandt first sounded mild when asked about the UCP leader’s role in a movement that helped prevent gay men from seeing their dying spouses in hospital.

Fildebrandt said he once supported Kenney because he felt the leader had come to accept gay rights. “Views change, people change,” Fildebrandt said.

Then he launched.

“But fighting to make sure that gay men dying of AIDS could not be visited by their loved ones? That shocked me. That is cruel.

“I can’t imagine how someone would be able, in good conscience, to say that someone dying of a horrible disease would not be able to see their loved ones because they’re gay.

“In any age — I don’t care if it’s the 2000s or the Dark Ages — that’s just cruel.”

This first erupted Wednesday with an NDP attack ad that showed the young Kenney appearing to chortle over his role in defeating a domestic partners ordinance in San Francisco, when he was a student there in the 1980s.

On Thursday, the NDP released a new 10-minute video shot mostly in San Francisco. It shows emotional interviews with AIDS activists and a surviving spouse.

Asked how that video was done — and who paid — an NDP spokesperson said: “One person went down on his vacation a couple of weeks ago and worked with a local videographer. Of course, it’s 100 per cent party (not government).”

The NDP is featuring the video online and plans to use parts of it for more Kenney attack ads.