The owners of a dating website for gay men are looking for answers after their ads were removed from the TTC last week.

Ads for Squirt.org have been running in and around Wellesley Station since June. The posters recently began running inside subway trains, prompting at least 10 complaints from riders, TTC officials said.

The ads, which feature shirtless men embracing, were subsequently removed from TTC property.

“The ad was taken down as it promoted sex in public places, which is against the law,” said TTC spokesman Danny Nicholson.

Squirt is owned by Pink Triangle Press, which also publishes Daily Xtra. The company’s marketing director, Andrew Nolan, acknowledged the site contains a section for cruising but denied the ads promote illegal sex.

“Yelp also has cruising listings, but I very much doubt the TTC would remove a Yelp ad,” he said.

“We run ads in the U.K., the Netherlands, Australia and New Zealand and we’ve never had any problems,” Nolan said. “So to have them removed in a diverse city like Toronto was disappointing.”

Nolan said the TTC would not provide the content of the complaints against the ads. Without that information, he declined to speculate whether homophobia played a role.

However, Pink Triangle’s digital business director, Attila Szatmari, questioned why other ads with sexual tones were allowed and not Squirt’s.

“Nobody is complaining about the Tommy Hilfiger underwear ads but once you see two guys or three guys then it’s no longer acceptable,” he told Daily Xtra.