Bus ad battle over gay rights as Christian groups launch campaign

Christian groups supporting "gay cure therapy" are launching
a bus ad campaign using this slogan

In a development reminiscent of the Atheist Bus Campaign and the Christian ads that followed in response, two Christian groups have responded to a recent gay rights bus campaign by launching adverts of their own, Pink News reports.

London buses have recently been displaying the gay rights group Stonewall's well-known slogan "Some people are gay. Get over it!", and from Monday 16 April the words “Not gay! Post-gay and proud. Get over it” will be seen on the side of some of the capital's buses.

The new ads are the work of the Anglican Mainstream and the Core Issues Trust, conservative Christian groups which both support the controversial, pseudoscientific notion of "gay cure therapy” – indeed, this is the primary activity of the Core Issues Trust, which describes itself as a "Christian initiative seeking to support men and women with homosexual issues who voluntarily seek change in sexual preference and expression".

The two groups say they reject the Stonewall ad because it “implies the false idea that there is indisputable scientific evidence that people are ‘born gay’, and that they have no choice but to affirm their homosexual feelings”.

While the two groups behind the campaign have said that they “recognise the rights of individuals to identify as gay”, the Chief Executive of Stonewall, Ben Summerskill, suggested that the new campaign has its roots in homophobia:

“It’s sad that any self-styled “Christian” group promotes voodoo “gay cure therapy”, which has been discredited by the BACP, the UK’s leading professional body for counselling psychotherapists. Life would be much easier if these organisations just admitted that they don’t like gay people.”