Christian group gets Australian pro-safe sex ads pulled [updated]

“Rip & Roll” advert

It’s not just US Christian-Right groups who seem determined to remain on the wrong side of any given issue. Only a week after an Australian health education group launched an ad campaign to promote the use of sexual protection, a Christian lobby was able to kick up enough of a hissy fit over it to get the adverts yanked:

The Queensland Association for Healthy Communities launched its "Rip and Roll" advertisements a week ago and today learned they were being scrapped after about 30 complaints.

The adverts feature a black and white image of a gay couple embracing, holding an unopened red condom packet.

It includes the website address and hotline for Healthy Communities, which has been receiving state government funding for sexual health promotion since 1988.

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).

For its part, the ACL maintains that its opposition to the campaign had nothing to do with the depiction of the gay couple and was solely about the “sexual nature of the ads”. Because subdued kissing and merely holding an unopened condom wrapping is too explicit for these puritanical pearl-clutchers.

Oh, wait. Silly me. Of course any ad that even so much as alludes to anything remotely sexual is going to offend these busybodies. They’re part of the Religion of the Perpetually Persecuted^TM, after all. And who cares that recent testing has uncovered the highest number of HIV diagnoses since the mid-80s? Most of them are gays, anyway, so it’s not like Christians can be expected to care about promoting sexual protection and health advice for such undesirables, is it now?

(via Joe. My. God.)

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UPDATE: (07/01/11 4:25 PM) – Ads have been restored! More here.