London Mayor, Boris Johnson, Pulls Anti-Gay Adverts

BorisJohnson London Mayor, Boris Johnson, Pulls Anti Gay Adverts

Good on you, Boris, good on you.

London’s Mayor, Boris Johnson, put a stop last week to an anti-gay advertising campaign that was supposed to run on approximately two dozen buses across five different routes.

The controversial ad was commissioned by Core Issues Trust, a registered charity that funds “reparative therapy” for gay Christians which can “develop their heterosexual potential.”

Yes, you understood that right, this is a group that thinks they can “fix” gay people and make them straight.

Worldwide orthodox group, Anglican Mainstream, also helped back the campaign.

The advertisements that were going to run said: “Not gay! Post-gay, ex-gay and proud. Get over it!”

notgayad London Mayor, Boris Johnson, Pulls Anti Gay Adverts

Johnson stepped in, ordering the transport chiefs to pull the ads and preventing the campaign from going public just days before their scheduled appearance due to public outrage by gay rights activists and other politicians that (rightly) cited the ads as being homophobic.

Well, can you blame them? It’s incredibly hard to argue that they’re not.

Treating homosexuality like a condition or disease to be fixed, and implying that you can just “get over” the sexual preferences that are core to one’s identity is like telling women they can pray away their uterus, and “get over” the whole monthly menstrual cycle thing.

While the Christian groups behind the ads are complaining about censorship, citing that they went through all the proper channels to get the campaign approved, it’s refreshing to see a politician doing the right thing in the face of such blatant intolerance.

Johnson had the following to say about his decision:

“London is one of the most tolerant cities in the world and intolerant of intolerance. It is clearly offensive to suggest that being gay is an illness that someone recovers from and I am not prepared to have that suggestion driven around London on our buses.”

We’ll say it again: good on you, Boris.

Read the full story here, via The Guardian.