How the Australian Christian Lobby created the most successful safe sex campaign in recent times.
When street advertising company, Adshel pulled down a series of bus shelter posters of two fully-clothed men hugging and holding a condom in Brisbane, they couldn’t have imagined the community outcry that would erupt over the next 24 hours. The photo, in black and white, depicted both men casually dressed wearing crosses around their necks, holding hands while the remaining hand held a bright-red rubber. Rip & Roll was the message – ‘A safe-sex message from Healthy Communities’ it read. No pornographic materials, no nudity, not even a cheeky kiss.
But about 30 letters of complaint moved Adshel to pull down the safe-sex advertising campaign. Nationwide media coverage; community outrage; a protest outside the Brisbane Adshel office and a Facebook group of over 40,000 supporters moved the company to put them up again. ACL’s Queensland director Wendy Francis started the letter campaign; a campaign to Australia’s children our ‘pre-sexualised’ culture – she reiterates that her qualm had nothing to do homosexuality. Critics slammed the campaign as down-right ‘homophobic’.
What was championed as a win for the Australian Christians and conservatives alike quickly backfired within a day and snowballed into the Australian Christian Lobby’s greatest PR disasters.
Adshel, a company that provides advertising in bus shelters in Brisbane; Goa Billboards and the Advertising Standards Bureau had received about 30 complaints about the particular advertisement. Queensland Association of Healthy Communities (QAHC) as part of Queensland Government’s funded HIV prevention program, weren’t told till after the posters were pulled down.
On May 31, QAHC Executive Director Paul Martin released a statement, saying he was deeply disappointed with Adshel’s behaviour and the ACL’s actions were homophobic.
‘The advert is in no way explicit or offensive to the average Queenslander. The complaints claim that depictions of gay people and discussion of sexual health are not appropriate for the general community. We reject these claims outright,’ he said.
‘2010 saw the highest number of people diagnosed with HIV than at any time since testing began in the mid 1980s. 65% of these diagnoses are among gay men. Now, more than ever, it is important that we get the safe sex message out to Queenslanders, particularly gay men, wherever they may be.
‘The advertisement is quite conservative when compared with other public advertisements for a range of commercial products and previous sexual health campaigns by the Australian and Queensland Governments.
“The Australian Christian Lobby has used homophobia dressed up as protecting children to have an important public education campaign removed… They are now trying [to] have gay people erased from the public sphere.’
Complaints likened the advertisement to propaganda; suggested the couple were fornicating and ‘promoting an unhealthy lifestyle’ to children. One complainant felt like the advertisement was an attack on her catholic beliefs since one of the men was wearing a cross around his neck.
By the morning of June 1, Adshel and ACL had received more than a pinch and punch for the first of the month.
That morning, Francis was whisked away onto Channel 7’s Sunrise program – defending her cause with all the conviction she could muster. It had been less than a year since one of Francis’ staffers had likened gay marriage to child abuse on her twitter account. A Facebook campaign created by one of the men in the poster, Michael James, grew at a pace unprecedented to any other safe-sex campaign. By the morning of June 1, the ‘Homophobia – Not Here – Adshel Caves To Homophobic Pressure’ group sat at over 20,000 followers. By lunch, it had more than doubled to over 40,000.
Adshel reinstated the campaign that afternoon after videos of a protest held outside the company’s Brisbane office circulated the internet. Adshel said they had no idea the complaints were part of a grass-roots campaign or that the ACL were involved.
In a statement, Adshel said it had never had any dealings with the Australian Christian Lobby and has not responded to any requests from this organisation.
‘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,’ said Adshel CEO Steve McCarthy.
‘Adshel does not take a position regarding the views or position of various community groups,’ the press release said.
While OUTinPerth hadn’t contacted Francis during her twitter fiasco, there was a sense of déjà vu to her voice, like it was Ground Hog Day for the ACL director. She reiterated to us that her campaign against the posters ‘had nothing to do with homosexuals’.
‘The whole issue is about children in bus shelters,’ she said.
Opposed to sexual advertising campaigns in general, Francis said she had been lobbying this cause since 2010: her ideal standard for advertising in public spaces would be a G-rating.
She said the ad in question should have not been put in a public places like bus shelters and on billboards. Francis said she was personally tired of living in a ‘sexually-saturated’ society and stated that it should be up to parents to inform their children of sex. The QLD director said she was not homophobic and the campaign ‘had nothing to do with homosexuals’.
‘Everyone has the choice to choose their lifestyle,’ she said.
As the day progressed concerns were raised about abuse Francis was receiving through Twitter and in public comments posted underneath online news stories. On Facebook discussion was forthright and in its most extreme, a group was created called ‘Wendy Francis, you fucking idiot’. ACL Chief of Staff Lyle Shelton said in a statement he was disappointed at the abuse leveled at ACL’s Queensland Director Wendy Francis.
WA AIDS Council executive director Trish Langdon shares a similar role to Paul Martin, the head of QAHC. Langdon repudiated ACL’s claims made by the Australian Christian Lobby about public health campaigns of the sexual health nature sexualising children.
She told OUTinPerth: ‘I think that buys into the age-old stereotype that all gay men are paedophiles and I just completely reject it.’
While the posters were reinstated, Langdon believes the exposure may have given the safe-sex message ‘much more prominence than bus shelters probably ever got’.
‘Sometimes when there has been adverse publicity and an organisation is able to put out a well-calibrated campaign about what they were trying to do, you can actually get quite valuable collateral media as a result of that, that you otherwise would not have got,’ she said.
‘That can mean more people get to see the ad or issue and there’s more community discussion than would have ever been generated by the advertisements on the bus shelters.’
By lunchtime on June 1, OUTinPerth had seen a Rip & Roll poster, stuck to a light post on Beaufort Street in Perth. ‘Promote Safe Sex For Everyone’ was written in red all over it. It had only been hours since the news had broken a sign of the national impact of this story. Even though Adshel moved quickly to rectify their mistake, the support has continued to grow – at the time of going to press, the number of people joining the main Facebook campaign stood at just over 80,000.
Benn Dorrington
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