“Ex-Gays” Denied Ad In Texas Paper

Focus On The Family’s “ex-gay” road show was denied ad space in a San Antonio newspaper. From Christianist site OneNewsNow:

Focus spokesman Gary Schneeberger tells OneNewsNow that conference organizers tried to buy an ad in the San Antonio News-Express. “And the ad was rejected as being ‘offensive,’ even though all the ad really does is recount the personal story of a man on our team who used to struggle with same-sex attractions and found freedom from that through events like Love Won Out,” he notes. The newspaper wanted the ad changed to remove the life story of the former homosexual because of concern that homosexuals in the community might be offended.

“Now, what’s kind of ironic to us is that when you look at, and we did, look at three weeks’ worth of newspapers of the San Antonio News-Express, we found several ads for strip clubs,” Schneeberger points out. “We found ads for lingerie models in the classifieds.” So Schneeberger feels the newspaper demonstrated no concern over offending the 98 percent of the city’s population who are not homosexual, but balked at the risk of offending the two percent who are.

A sample of the refused ad is at the “ex-gay” site. (PDF)