Safe sex campaign by the Queensland Association for Healthy Communities.

Adshel has reversed its decision to pull ads promoting safe sex within the gay community following an intense community backlash.



Late yesterday, the out-of-home media company pulled down ads from its bus shelters from the Queensland Association for Healthy Communities after receiving complaints due to a concerted lobbying campaign from the Australian Christian Lobby.



Adshel chief executive Steve McCarthy said: “It has now become clear that Adshel has been the target of a coordinated ACL campaign. This has led us to review our decision to remove the campaign and we will therefore reinstate the campaign with immediate effect.”



Earlier today, Adshel denied that its original decision had any associations with the Australian Christian Lobby. The ACL director Wendy Francis claimed credit for the removal of the campaign from Adshel sites.



Adshel came under criticism today for its decision to pull the ads, which depicted a fully-clothed homosexual couple in an embrace promoting safe sex and condom use.



GOA Billboards refused to remove the same campaign from its billboard sites. GOA Billboards joint managing director Chris Tyquin told AdNews that he had received some complaints over the weekend regarding the campaign, but the company had decided not to pull the ads unless directed to by the Advertising Standards Bureau (ASB).



Tyquin said he had received hundreds of emails and messages today in support of GOA's decision. He said: "it seems to me, the broader community is getting behind the campaign."



A Facebook event created by Michael James, one of the men posing in the ads, has over 30,000 supporters at the time of writing. The Facebook page called on Adshel to put the ads back up and accused the company of "caving to homophobic pressure".



A small protest was held outside of Adshel's Brisbane offices earlier this afternoon. Throughout the day, Adshel was trending second on Twitter in Sydney.



The Australian Christian Lobby said the campaign "went against prevailing community standards to introduce sexuality to young children through forced exposure in public."

Several of the complaints received by the ASB claimed the campaign promoted an "unhealthy homosexual lifestyle". An ASB hearing on the complaints will be held next week.



The controversy comes as recommendations from two separate government inquiries into out-of-home advertising are due to be handed down.

Outdoor Media Association chief executive Charmaine Moldrich told AdNews: "Here's a campaign where it is controversial for a group of people and the way to deal with that is not to manipulate the system like ACL has done, but to use the system properly. The code of ethics is the right way for us to deal with these issues and adjudication is the right place for these issues to end up.



"The industry is advertising to a broad community rather than just interest groups, you have to consider everyone."



Moldrich said that out of 30,000 out-of-homes ads that were put up last year, 90 of them attracted complaints and out of those 90, only seven of them were found to be in breach of codes.

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