Mayor of London yanks anti-gay ads from buses two hours after the campaign is made public

benbradley said:

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Okay, so muravyets mentioned organizations that promise everlasting life, but I don't know if I want to go there.
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I'd like to clarify that I did not criticize religious groups for promising everlasting life. First off, very few of those groups do that in public advertisements. Second, it's not a tangible claim, therefore not subject to tests for truthfulness, therefore not provably a lie. But "abortion causes breast cancer" is a proven lie. That is what I criticized certain religious groups for doing, referring to anti-abortion billboards that periodically crop up around the country. Same goes for "we've got the cure for Teh Ghey."

You'll never see me calling other people's religious beliefs lies, but you'll also never see me letting people get away with spreading lies under the guise of religious belief.

benbradley said:

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Were Power Balance products (bracelets and pendants) ever advertised and sold in the UK? If so, were their ads stopped as quickly?

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It's legal to sell them, and it's legal to advertise them. What's not legal is to make unsubstantiated claims about their efficacy. If an advert does this and someone complains, the ASA has the power to get the advert withdrawn or changed.

benbradley said:

But political ads are well regulated, or rather, specifically NOT regulated in the USA. They cannot be altered by law (for what it's worth, the FCC is "the law" in radio and TV ads), regardless of what is said, as part of "free speech." Here's an infamous example, and I remember his 1974 ads featuring the "N" word:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._B._Stoner
If someone has registered to vote as a member of either major party, they'll get political "robocalls" on the phone, and unlike unsolicited commercial sales calls, there's no way to "opt out."

But to the original topic, this is an example of "doing what needs to be done" (stopping a vile ad campaign) and finding justification for doing it, and in this case there just happens to be a convenient law to rely on. It's obvious that less controversial but equally unscientific ads get little or no scrutiny before they're run, or even during or afterward unless enough people complain.

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Well, of course something gets pulled quicker the more complaints there are - if no one alerts the authorities to illegal ads, of course they won't get pulled.

Here in Sweden, all communication (commercial or not) is subject to the same rules; ie protected by the freedom of speech, but also subject to rules concerning fraud, hate-speech etc. But regarding ads there's also a self-regulatory agency which polices marketing and advertising communications. Basically, they can't do anything except naming and shaming but any ad claiming that being gay is something that you would need a cure for, would likely get slammed big time. I mean, even if it was true that you could "un-gay" people, to advertise for it in that way is unacceptable, just as it would be if there were ads for sex changes that pushed the message that you could now be cured of being a man, or ads for church camp, saying they could de-Muslimise you.

Offensive crap, basically.