HIV Prevention Ads Yanked in Australia

An ad campaign to promote safe sex featuring a gay couple has been yanked from bus shelters in the Australian state of Queensland following complaints from an antigay Christian group.

TheHerald Sunreports on the objections to the Rip and Roll campaign launched last week by the Queensland Association for Healthy Communities, which receives state funding. The ads, posted in Brisbane, featured a gay couple embracing and holding an unopened condom packet.

"Adshel, the company that provides advertising for Brisbane's bus shelters; Goa Billboards; and the Advertising Standards Bureau were targeted in an orchestrated campaign by the Australian Christian Lobby (ACL)," reports the Herald Sun.

ACL Queensland executive director Wendy Francis said she objected to the sexual nature of the ad, not the gay identity of the men pictured. Last year she ran for the Australian senate as a candidate of the Family First party and was forced to apologize for a tweet that compared granting marriage rights to same-sex couples to allowing child abuse.