Defiant GPA to appeal ASA ruling
It appears we were a bit hasty in condemning the Gay Police association for failing to supply evidence to the ASA for their 74% increase in homophobic attacks claim.
Kevin Boyle of the GPA told Pink News:
The GPA never refused to supply any material, we made it clear to the ASA that as there was a criminal investigation underway so we could not supply the material.
So what did the ASA think they were doing passing judgement before they had received all the evidence? The one judgement that seemed unequivocally correct turns out to have been totally unjustified in the circumstances.
The GPA are also openly defying the ASA instruction “to ensure future campaigns were not presented in a way that could cause undue offence and also […] that they should ensure the use of imagery did not send misleading messages to consumers”.
Mr Boyle’s response to that:
We are certainly not going to abide by the ruling that we should make sure our adverts do not offend people, one persons idea of offence is another’s idea of freedom of expression.
Give that officer a medal!
I’m not entirely happy with this ad, though its shortcomings could have been shown up by debate and ridicule, if necessary. The use of a bible does imply that all homophobic incidents come from the Judaeo-Christian tradition, when many, we can safely assume, will come from Muslims and possibly other ‘faiths’. The picture says one thing, but the wording is ‘the religious belief of the perpetrator’. Now if they’d put the Bible and Koran side by side …
Hmm … Well, we know why they wouldn’t do that, don’t we? But if they’d had an image that encompassed all possible religions they might have got away with it, backed up, of course, by statistical evidence.
Right on there brother. Perhaps they shouldn’t have used a holy book at all and just said “religion” or “faith” citing websites like godhatesfags. Clearly, they should have also checked their facts before committing them to the forensic scrutiny of the opposing side!