Passing HTML to template

Hello,
The following template call results in all HTML being stripped from the
result.  Is this normal?

 <xsl:call-template name="topic_a">
        <xsl:with-param name="TITLE">Current Meets</xsl:with-param>
        <xsl:with-param name="TOPIC_WIDTH">200</xsl:with-param>
        <xsl:with-param name="TOPIC">
         Be the first to schedule a meet!
            Click <a href="addmeet.asp">Here!</a>
        </xsl:with-param>
    </xsl:call-template>
</xsl:template>

The template looks like this:
<xsl:template name="topic_a">
<xsl:param name="TITLE"/>
<xsl:param name="TOPIC"/>
<xsl:param name="TOPIC_WIDTH">200</xsl:param>
<table width="{$TOPIC_WIDTH}" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">
  <tr>
    <td><table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">
        <tr>
          <td width="5"><img src="images/msotopic_tplt.gif" width="5"
height="15"/></td>
          <td bgcolor="F7F7F7"><div class="topic_title"><xsl:value-of
disable-output-escaping="yes" select="$TITLE"/></div></td>
          <td width="5"><img src="images/msotopic_tprt.gif" width="5"
height="15"/></td>
        </tr>
      </table></td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td><table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">
        <tr>
          <td width="5"><IMG SRC="images/msotopic_lt.gif" WIDTH="5"
HEIGHT="7" ALT=""/></td>
          <td background="images/msotopic_rpt.gif"><strong><IMG
SRC="images/msotopic_rpt.gif" WIDTH="15" HEIGHT="7" ALT=""/></strong></td>
          <td width="5"><IMG SRC="images/msotopic_rt.gif" WIDTH="5"
HEIGHT="7" ALT=""/></td>
        </tr>
      </table></td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td><div class="topic_topic"><xsl:value-of select="$TOPIC"/></div></td>
  </tr>
</table>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>


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