The Advertising Standards Authority has upheld a compliant against a Right to Life ad which claimed The Green Party supported same-sex marriage. The anti-abortion lobby ran an ad in the Christchurch Press the day before last year's election saying the Greens supported legislation providing for same sex marriage, titled: 'The Government's secret agenda for social engineering?' The ad quoted Green Party leader Jeanette Fitzsimons, who said: "As a specific Green Party policy, we state that rainbow and heterosexual partnerships are equally entitled to respect and support. We support the extension of all legal partnership arrangements and rights to same-sex couples". It then concluded the "the Greens therefore support legislation to provide for same sex marriage." This was just one example of several Green Party policies which Right to Life highlighted in the ad, leading them the conclusion: "These threats to the unborn, the elderly, and to the family should be strenuously resisted." Green list candidate Alan Liefting complained to the Advertising Standards Authority that their assertion was incorrect – The Green Party had supported Civil Union legislation, but ‘same-sex marriage' had never been brought up. The misleading advertisement "may have had an adverse effect on the Green Party election result," wrote Liefting in his complaint, which was approved by the Authority. The full Advertising Standards Authority decision can be downloaded via the link below.
Credit: GayNZ.com Daily News Staff
First published: Thursday, 12th February 2009 - 7:27pm