WHERE SUCCESSFUL ADVERTISING MEETS LGBT EQUALITY

Oregon Citizen's Alliance, NAMBLA

Members:

As perhaps the first information that many Oregonians saw on TV about gays, this commercial demonizes the gay community as pedophiles by focusing on the controversial splinter pedophile group NAMBLA, the North American Man-Boy Love Association.

With ominous background music, this ad from the Oregon Citizens Alliance ("No Special Rights Committee") has video of a naked toddler on the shoulders of an adult at an outdoor gathering. The narrator says, "In a desire to legalize sex with children, NAMBLA has proposed first changing the age of consent to 13, then eliminating the Age of Consent law altogether."

The commercial supported anti-gay Measure 9, which would have specified that gays were "perverse" and "abnormal" in the state constitution. The measure ultimately failed by a narrow margin.

Another effort from the OCA behind Measure 9 returned in 2000 to prohibit schools and community colleges from encouraging, promoting or sanctioning homosexual and bisexual behavior.

User Comments
Dom
NAMBLA is NOT part of MY gay community. I wonder if the gay community has ever thought about airing KKK railies and questioning the religious right's agenda? It's time people realized just because someone wants to attach themselves to another group doesn't mean they're part of that group. I can't imagine many gay people actually supporting NAMBLA, but they're about as linked to the gay community as the Klan is to the religious right.

Tom Scheirs
Despite the fact that the No Special Rights Committee clearly equals all GLBT's with pedophiles in this ad, I am much more appalled and deeply disturbed by NAMBLA's objectives. Unfortunately, organisations like this encourage homophobia and generally put the whole gay community in a bad light. They provide just the reasons why so many family values-inspired organisations demonise us. While at the same time preventing our full integration as normal human beings in society. As a gay person, I can clearly understand the reaction of the Oregon Citizens Alliance, although it is of course regrettable. Maybe the gay community should take a clear stand against such misguided (not to say deranged) initiatives and individuals. As long as they are provided with a platform to advocate their disgusting ideas, they will always reflect on the rest of us, with (ad) campaigns as this one as a result.

Paul
Although I hate what this ad does, until the gay community is willing to disassociate itself from NAMBLA and what it stands for, this kind of crap can and will continue. And make no mistake about it, NAMBLA is ALL about pedophilia.

Jaime
I really wish that the gay community would disassociate itself from NAMBLA. NAMBLA is an organization that promotes pedophilia, simply put. I can understand the ad's reaction to NAMBLA, but they are ignorant for assuming that the organization is actually part of the gay right's movement. It's like attacking Martin Luther King because of the existence of the militant Black Panthers.