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What do Cardinal George Pell, News Weekly editor John Ballantyne and Imam of Omar Mosque Dr Mohammad Anas have in common?
All three are key signatories to a parliamentary petition by advocacy group 'Saying No to Sexual Advertisements', whose aim is as its title suggests.
Sexplicit: Is this Beck's ad too sexy for our streets?
“You may have noticed how over sexualised advertisements alongside Victorian/New South Wales roads and cars are becoming," states the group's website.
“This petition has been formed in an attempt to make a difference by putting pressure on both state parliaments to clean up its act and our roads.
“The petition was formed as a subsequence to the Australian Advertising Standards Bureau inability to remove sexualised and distracting images on the sides of vehicles.”
The group’s aim is to collect enough signatures to alter state law in NSW and Victoria. The petition for Victoria states:
“The petitioners therefore request that the Legislative Assembly of Victoria adheres to the request of us, the undersigned, to ban advertisements on billboards, on the sides of vehicles and in public spaces, which:
- advertise adult night-clubs, prostitution services, sex aids and other sex-shop merchandise;
- demean women and men by depicting them as mere sex objects;
- use implied or explicit sexual images or words which risk distracting motor vehicle drivers' attention; and
- expose children to inappropriate adult material.”
Eros Association CEO Fiona Patten said the campaign was reminiscent of the Porn Free Zone campaigns waged by the disgraced former Member for Capricornia and lay preacher Keith Wright during the early 1990s.
“The signs that this group are objecting to have been approved by the Advertising Standards Bureau and I would trust their judgement on sexual imagery rather than the celibate Archbishop Pell," she told MCV.
“Just because a roadside sign or car sign describes or depicts something sexual does not necessarily mean it is offensive,” she said, adding that the campaign was reminiscent of another failed 1990s censorship effort by fundamentalist US group Cover up Animals Rude Parts.
“This group wrote to members of parliament asking governments to enforce forms of clothing for sheep and cattle that could be seen from the nation’s highways.”
The Victorian AIDS Council’s Colin Batrouney said the campaign would not affect the council’s highly sexualised safe sex advertisements.
He told MCV the intent of the Saying No to Sexual Advertisements
campaign appeared to be to protect children from exposure to sexualised
images on the roads.
“We do not now, and will not in future utilise sexually explicit images or words in billboard advertising that can be viewed by the general public," Batrouney said.
He said the campaign appeared to be wrong-minded in its intent and method.
“Since advertising uses sex to sell all sorts of things in a range of media and environments – particularly on television and the internet – it seems perverse that the focus appears to be on things you might see whilst driving around the roads."
www.notosexualadvertisements.info/index.html
www.eros.org.au
www.vicaids.asn.au
This cinema ad for Agent Provocateur was banned in the UK
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