I'm not sure what I think about this...

Why do the fanatics of this world try to make every one else conform to their own standards/points of view in the name of religion, I am a christian AND I have several friends both male and female who are gay, none of them are evil/bad people, they do not have horns or pointed tails, and if you didn't know them you would not be able to tell what their sexual orientation was.

I am constantly frustrated by the unloving, unhelpful things that we as Christians choose to involve ourselves in - and equally frustrated that the press are so reluctant to advertise the things we that we do get involved in to express our love and compassion. For an alternative perspective on a Christian view of this topic check out: www.loveisanorientation.com/about-2/.

How true, PRINTMISS. We carry on loving our children till the day we die - and though we may sometimes come to be concerned about the choices that they make in life, their sexuality is not a choice. It is them. And hopefully by being the people that they are, they find love. That's all we want for our offspring - that they are loved and happy.

I have just tuned into this, and on a serious note (not like me), it brought to mind a conversation I had with a very close friend who has two lovely sons, big strapping lads, and happily married. We were talking about homosexuals, (not sure why, just that our conversations seem to lead us on all sorts of strange places) and he is absolutely anti, calls them all sorts of nasty names, and then quite casually said 'I do not know what I would do if one of my sons told me he was gay'. I almost said to him that I wondered how one of his sons would ever tell him, knowing how he felt. That would have been the problem in that family, not the sexuality. Personally I feel that we are given life as a gift, and how we use that gift is then left to us.

Oh that is so funny JessM! I'm a beekeeper and get so frustrated when people refer to my bees a him/he/boys etc. I also saw a film yesterday where 2 men were looking at a painting of a magnificent bull and called it a cow! :-\ It's all down to ignorance. We need to make sure our Gkds grow up knowing these things. My 5 yr old GS helps us garden and look after the bees and hens.

I think it is a pretty poor stab at an ad.
I think Boris was wrong to ban it - they are not advertising anything illegal.
It is not discriminatory to have a theory about the causes of homosexuality, even if we think they are wrong. As long a they are not saying it is "evil" or "sinful" which they are not, in the ad.
I am having a deeply confused hour, with GKds watching an animated film about farm animals , called barn Yard or something. The main characters are boy cattle with udders, there are also girl cows with big eyes and long eyelashes. There is also a bull who only appears from the waist up. I thought they were just casting male voices to play the cows, but no, there are definitely male and female ones.
Surpasses Bee Movie (where the worker bees were all male) in biological inexactitude I think. No wonder kids can get confused about their gender identity
Oh and the poor old coyote getting terrible press yet again

Here's an article by Joan Smith on christian hectoring. It is in the Indie today arguing that it might have been better to let the horrid bus ads run their agrressive and intolerant course. Her argument is that it would very effectively show people that there is a hard core of christians who do not believe in "live and let live" at all.

Hear! Hear! dorset

I'm glad that the stupid ad was banned from our buses. Firstly, being gay isn't a choice it is what someone is - born gay not had it thurst upon them, not 'turned' by someone . It isn't a perversion like sado-masochisim[spelt] or a flasher or a paedophile etc which is learned behaviour - ie something that may have happened during a person's childhood. It is something that someone is, it can't be cured and why on earth would it have to be. I have had, and still do, a lot of gay friends. They are happy with what life gave them. What they are not happy about is that at times they feel they have to be secretive about it. The ones I know who are in their late 70's have told me real horror stories of the fear they felt at being caught and perhaps imprisoned. It is better these days however, straight people can walk down a high street holding hands and perhaps a little kiss - some outward show of affection. Gay people do and often have to bear horrible looks and/or remarks. So much for so called Christian teaching 'love ye one another'. Only if you are straight!!!

Personally, I am with Bob Hope, I don't care if they make it legal as long as they don't make it compulsory!

Seriously, I have always felt that you can't help who you fall in love with and if someone happens to fall in love with someone of the same sex that doesn't make them evil or a bad person. Lets face it the more love there is in this world the better.

I am a Christian but I certainly don't condone this ad and I believe many other Christians would also condemn it.

Thanks bags - I hadn't seen it when skipping through the online papers this morning. There seems to be a theory that gay people can become straight because many gay people are seen to be having 'straight' relationships. If only these 'gayness is curable' people could accept that sexual orientation is on a continuum that can change over one's lifetime. Some people remain exclusively gay or straight and have no problems with their sexual orientation. Others will move up and down their own continuum, being occasionally covert about their attraction to other people if they don't fit their society's expectations of them. Some people are able to explain that they are attracted to a wider range than others, and will have both gay and straight relationships. If you look at the possiblities - straight and bisexual, bi and bi, gay and gay, straight and straight, and all those subtle combinations between people who are somewhere else along their continuums, people who are exclusively straight for the whole of their lives become less of a majority. It's about time they did indeed 'get over it!'

Good article about this in today's Indie: Some people think being gay is a sin
God save us from those interfering busybodies!

I'm also with Boris.

Yes, there's a lot of indignation about the homophobic aspect - but the claims they're peddling are surely against advertising rules.

Good for Boris - not much freedom of speech being offered for gay people when you've got posters trying to stigmatise and silence them.

I'm with Boris too.

Good for Boris, I say!

I'm amazed the ads got past the disgustingness limitation rules.