From here:
Boris Johnson, the Conservative mayor, has pulled an “offensive” Christian campaign advertising “gay conversion” which was due to appear on London’s buses next week.
Revelations that adverts asserting the power of therapy to change the sexual orientation of gay people were due to be driven around the capital came as Johnson, who is seeking re-election in May, was due to appear at a mayoral hustings organised by the gay campaigning group Stonewall on Saturday.
The mayor immediately put the wheels in motion to halt the campaign after being alerted to the plans by the Guardian, and made clear that such advertising had no place in a tolerant city.
A clearly angered Johnson said: “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.”
A few points:
This is censorship of a message that is not illegal, hateful, pornographic or harmful to anyone: it simply goes against the Zeitgeist and that, it seems, is all it takes to justify state censorship.
The fact that there are some people who used to experience same-sex attraction, now don’t and are happy about it, means that the ad is true: it is not false advertising.
There is nothing in the ad that suggests homosexual acts are wrong (I think they are, but the ad doesn’t imply that), merely that it is possible for a homosexual to change his experience of sexual attraction. How is that intolerant?
Why is Boris Johnson’s intolerance of the ad more palatable than the imputed intolerance of the ad itself – especially since the ad is not intolerant and Johnson’s banning of it has been done in the name of tolerance?
