A radio advert discouraging the use of the word 'gay' as a slur was "offensive and against the code of human rights", according to a recent complaint.
In the advert, created by LGBT advocacy group Rainbow Youth, a man tells a friend he went to a "pretty gay" wedding.
"I don't think you're meant to say that anymore," the friend says, before learning it was actually a wedding between two men.
The ad is part of Rainbow Youth's 'If it's not gay, it's not gay' campaign.
In a complaint to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), J Wood said the campaign is attempting to "pervert the use of language".
"It implies that if a person used it, for example, to describe another or others as having had 'a gay old time', that they are impugning and/or insulting the homosexual community as a whole," the complainant wrote.
"As a normal, heterosexual, and quite tolerant of the differences of others, I find that to be offensive and in fact, probably against the code of human rights in that it attempts to portray myself (and others like me) as being homophobic if we use the word in normal, everyday English [sic]."
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The ASA threw the complaint out, saying it "promoted an important message about the use of the word 'gay' as a term for homosexual people being conflated with its offensive colloquial meaning of 'foolish, stupid, or unimpressive'".
"The chair said the advertisement made no comment on the use of the word 'gay' in terms of the traditional meaning of 'light-hearted and carefree' or 'brightly coloured and showy'," the ASA said, ruling there was no grounds for the complaint to proceed.
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It follows a complaint last year about another advert in the 'It's not gay' campaign, in which a man drops a pie and calls it "gay". A woman named Gay Fairweather said she was "deeply insulted" because, in her view, the Rainbow Youth slogan meant "unless I'm a lesbian, I'm not me", Stuff reported in November.
That complaint was also thrown out.
Newshub.
