Problems with Top Control and OverlayTrigger

[Jaxel]

I have the following:

<xen:topctrl>
<a href="{xen:link 'threads/promote-confirm', $thread}" class="callToAction OverlayTrigger" data-cacheOverlay="false">
<span><xen:if is="{$promotion}">{xen:phrase promote_options}<xen:else />{xen:phrase promote_thread}</xen:if></span>
</a>
</xen:topctrl>

As you can see, its a top control... but it uses OverlayTrigger. The problem lies in the return after the overlay is finished.

return $this->responseRedirect(
XenForo_ControllerResponse_Redirect::SUCCESS,
XenForo_Link::buildPublicLink('threads', $thread),
null,
array('linkPhrase' => '<span>'.($input['delete'] ? new XenForo_Phrase('promote_thread') : new XenForo_Phrase('promote_options')).'</span>')
);

Because of the way the top controls are formatted, I am forced to wrap my linkPhrase in <span> tags... however, when the javascript returns the <span> tag, it returns &lt; and &rt; instead of < >. Is there any way to get around this?