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VANCOUVER – In what may well have been the largest gathering of lawyers in B.C. history, members of the Law Society of B.C. decisively voted Tuesday to stop Trinity Western University — a Christian school that condemns gay sex — from being able to hand out law degrees.

But while gay rights advocates praised the vote as a hard-earned victory, the ultimate fate of TWU’s proposed law school still rests with the Law Society’s 31 governing benchers.

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As the society noted in a handout, Tuesday’s resolution is “only an expression of the members of the Law Society, and is not binding on the Benchers.”

According to early results, 3210 to 968 of B.C. lawyers sided with a resolution calling for TWU’s soon-to-be-opened law school to be denied Law Society of B.C. accreditation.

“We won!” declared a Tuesday night Tweet by Michael Mulligan, the Victoria lawyer who helped trigger the meeting.

The “special general meeting” was triggered by a rare request filed by five per cent of the membership, and summoned B.C’s 11,000 practicing lawyers to gather at 16 locations across the province, with the vast majority massing in a gargantuan exhibition hall at Canada Place.