Gay Chatline Censored

There’s no accounting for taste, they say, and Canadian community paper, Uptown Magazine, calls gay sex line Cruiseline’s new ads “distasteful”.

The queer company, which has been advertising in the weekly for years, pulled its ads after publisher Bob Cox objected to two of their “too sexy” ads.

Though Cruiseline agreed their first ad pushed the envelope, advertising manager Liam O’Reilly insists the second ad did nothing to offend:

It was an ad with one man with his arms around another man, and they have their shirts off, but other than that they were fully clothed.
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It was surprising to me that a magazine that seemed to be kind of progressive and up with the times is the magazine that is trying to censor.

Cox and company, however, claim Cruiseline simply wants controversy. And, what’s more, readers found the seemingly innocuous ad to be in “poor taste”.

It was a man, fairly large and muscular man, grabbing another man from behind in a way that was pretty clear that it was a sexually suggestive pose.
Frankly, the complaints that I heard were a matter of taste. People felt it was in poor taste.
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This was … I think they called it a ‘shock campaign’ themselves, in which they were trying to elicit a response — and they certainly did.

The publisher also dismisses any declaration of homophobia, explaining that he and his paper have happily published Cruiseline’s ads for five years. Cox also explain that he and his paper have been regulating their advertising standards:

This whole issue has made us take a really close look at all advertising, because we do want to use one standard for all advertising and we want to make sure we’re not inconsistent.

We can’t imagine that in five years Cruiseline hasn’t run a single “sexual” ad. They are, after all, a gay chat line. Also, do people still use gay chat lines? Isn’t that why we have the internet?