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A controversial advertisement designed to raise awareness about safe sex for gay men has been taken down after an influx of complaints about children seeing it outside a dairy.

The ad showed two posters that were displayed side-by-side on billboards and online earlier this year. The first one showed a cartoon image of a man’s naked bottom with the text “First timers, enter here”.

The second poster said, “Ins and Outs – Sex education for gay and bi guys – insandouts.org.nz”. The “I” in the word “Ins” was drawn in the shape of a penis and the “O” in the word “Outs” was drawn to look like an anus.

The Burnett Foundation, formerly the New Zealand Aids Foundation, funded the posters to raise awareness about gay and bisexual sex education.

However, they quickly garnered 86 complaints to the Advertising Standards Authority.

‘A disgusting advert’

“I want the posters promoting anal sex outside the Birkdale dairy taken down immediately. This is a disgusting advert to have in a prime location where young children come to a dairy,” one complaint reads.

“This advert is so incredibly inappropriate to have on display for children to see. It directs them to pornographic material on the Burnett Foundation website.

Other complainants were concerned that the ads seemed more of a “how to” rather than an education on safe sex practices and that they were sexualised for no reason.

Brian Tamaki said Destiny Church made a complaint about the advertisements. Photo / Alex Burton

The foundation’s chief executive, Joe Rich, told ��һ�ǿ����� the ads were designed to target gay, bisexual and men who have sex with other men in New Zealand and fill a gap in sexual education.

People in these groups are 348 times more likely to acquire HIV than others, 108 times more likely to acquire syphilis, and 44 times more likely to acquire gonorrhoea, the foundation claims.

He believed the complaints stemmed from a targeted hate campaign.

“Many complainants were overtly homophobic and demonstrated a personal belief that public health messaging should not address specific communities with some of the very real and important issues related to their health and wellbeing,” he said.

“We must normalise sex positivity in the public sphere. We know unequivocally from international evidence and programmes, by promoting pleasure as an outcome of practising positive sexual health habits, you achieve greater behaviour change toward better health outcomes.”

Christian lobby group Family First posted a photo of the posters on its Facebook in September telling its followers, “You know what to do”, accompanied by the Advertising Standards Authority’s email address.

Its founder, Bob McCoskrie, told ��һ�ǿ����� the adverts were “perverted” and shouldn’t be shown in front of families, or children.

“The Aids Foundation has just been tone-deaf in terms of where and whom they’re targeting,” he said.

“I think any big poster promoting anal sex outside a dairy is a no-go and I think most people would agree with that.”

McCoskrie said the posters were explicit and he would have also taken issue if they’d been promoting heterosexual safe sex.

Destiny Church founder Bishop Brian Tamaki also took issue with the ads and posted on X labelling them “pure filth”.

He told ��һ�ǿ����� a complaint had been made to the authority on behalf of his congregation.

“That level of sexual content, I just disagree that it should be around the town on windows and storefronts and dairies close by where kids can see it.

“It’s not the type of content that children should be exposed to that early in life.”

Were they offensive?

The Burnett Foundation said in response that the campaign was not aimed at children and it had carefully selected placements outside of school exclusion zones and ran during the school holiday period.

However, there was a single instance where the ad was mistakenly placed inside one of these exclusion zones. It had been removed by the media company that owned the space.

In a recently released ruling, the authority has ordered the Burnett Foundation to take down the ads and not to use them again.

“A majority of the Complaints Board said the advertisement was likely to cause serious offence. This is because both posters contained references to sexual activity,” the authority’s ruling reads.

The majority of the board that reviewed the complaints agreed that it wasn’t appropriate for “such provocative, sexually explicit text and imagery” to be displayed to the public and that the cartoon-like images and the bright colours could have appealed to children.

A minority of the board disagreed and said the ads didn’t meet the threshold to cause widespread offence and the posters were conveying an important public health message. That minority also noted that children who saw them would have been unlikely to understand the sexual innuendo.

However, ultimately the board found that the advertisement was not socially responsible and was in breach of the Advertising Code.

An ad campaign from the Burnett Foundation in early 2024 titled "Don't ride distracted" attracted eight complaints, but was not ordered to be removed by the authority. Photo / BFA

Earlier this year another advertising campaign by the foundation urged men to book a discreet HIV test through its website, alongside pictures of topless men.

The ads collected eight complaints that the posters were overtly sexual, but the authority did not order their removal.

Jeremy Wilkinson is an Open Justice reporter based in Manawatū covering courts and justice issues with an interest in tribunals. He has been a journalist for nearly a decade and has worked for ��һ�ǿ����� since 2022.