Gay and Lesbian Communications Ban

TOPICS: Lesbian and gay media. Gay and lesbian communications issues. Gay and lesbian community marketing professional communications expert help. Gay and lesbian community marketing. Gay and lesbian community. Marketing to the gay community. Gay media. Gay and lesbian communications. Gay communications. Gay media advertising. London Tube bans advertising for GT magazine. Gay Times special issue gay and lesbian advertising tube poster advertisement banned.


Ian Johnson, Out Now
July 18, 2007

One of our gay and lesbian communications clients, the UK's leading gay market media product, Gay Times now branded as GT magazine is in the news for a not so nice reason.

A planned poster advertisement for the gay media magazine GT has been banned by London Underground.

In an ironic twist the London Tube GT poster media advertising communications campaign was being planned by the gay and lesbian media publication to coincide with the upcoming 40th anniversary of the decriminalization of male homosexuality in the UK.

The image above shows the banned gay and lesbian communications campaign celebrating such a legal equality milestone for the lesbian and gay community is hardly objectively offensive.

Gay Market News reported earlier this year that a previous anti-gay poster media advertising PR communications campaign by Sandals Resorts in the UK market was a gay and lesbian PR disaster which was eventually reversed on London Underground Tube stations, with Sandals removing the offending anti-gay and lesbian communications advertising - which specifically precluded lesbian and gay couples from their advertised offers.

What is most difficult to fathom is the fact that to our eye, the banned version of the GT poster seems to represent less sexually charged communications than the approved version, and certainly is far less sexual than many of the non-gay advertising communications currently approved for the London Tube - such as recent poster media ad campaigns for D&G Dolce and Gabbana brands or Sloggi advertisements for ladies underwear.

According to a communications spokesperson for GT magazine's gay and lesbian media publisher, Millivres Prowler:

"In our opinion, their refusal is totally unjustified considering some of the heterosexual ads on display at the moment.

"By having a couple in a natural pose, consumers can infer that they are a couple.

"The freedom issue is all about celebrating this fact, and the fact couples of the same sex have the same rights as heterosexual couples."

Rupert Murdoch gets another media mention in Gay Market News this week, as his free evening media newspaper, The London Paper, is running an online poll - with most remarks favouring GT and being against the London Underground Tube advertising ban.

One comment left there wrote:

In my eyes the approved poster is the more raunchy of the two! Shows just how much personal judgement plays in deciding these matters.

Too true.

This looks like a gay and lesbian communications PR disaster in the making for London Underground, and serves to remind that after 40 years, and increasing gay community equality, this gay and lesbian advertising communications ban reveals more community progress on gay and lesbian communications equality is still badly needed - in advertising and many other areas of life.

Gay and lesbian communications lesson? Think before you act and check that the gay and lesbian communications you seek to ban is genuinely and objectively advertising communication that most people - including both gay and lesbian people and non-gay people - would see as being ad communications that should be banned.

To access the best gay community marketing advice, gay community market research and gay advertising help from communications professionals, speak with Out Now.

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