MEDIA RELEASE
4 April 2009

Sex Shop Ad Highly Offensive to Families

Family First NZ is slamming a Wellington sex shop advertisement as highly offensive and tacky and is perfect evidence of the need to have a pre-vetting procedure on public billboards.

“It is completely inappropriate for public billboards to have sex toy advertisements which are both offensive and inappropriate, especially for children to be confronted with, and the church setting simply adds to the offensive nature by offending a sector of our community who would find the ad in particularly bad taste,” says Bob McCoskrie, National Director of Family First NZ.

“A company that associates people praying in church and sex toys is quite simply out to offend.”

“The only redeeming factor of the Prostitution Reform law was that it dictated the level of advertising that brothels could do, in order to protect children and families from unwanted exposure.”

“It is time that we applied this principle to all billboards,” says Mr McCoskrie.

“Because of the public exposure of billboards and the fact that they may contain material that parents do not want their children confronted with or even be confronted with themselves, there needs to be a far greater control and standard on this type of advertising.”

“Recent complaints about ‘longer lasting sex’ and ‘watching porn with your sister or mother’ billboards shows that the self-regulatory system is not working and that communities are sick and tired of this offensive type of advertising.”

Family First NZ will be laying a complaint with the Advertising Standards Authority – for what it’s worth.

ENDS

© Scoop Media