Word: gays
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Officials in South Carolina have replaced southern hospitality with southern hostility following an advertising campaign that featured posters declaring, "South Carolina is so gay...
...campaign, launched by marketing agency Out Now Consulting, was intended to promote Amro Worldwide, a London-based gay tour operator, and to tout tourism to several gay-friendly U.S. destinations. In the week leading up to the British capital's gay pride parade on July 5, the agency placed 60 posters along escalators in London's Leicester Square and Covent Garden tube stations, which serve Soho, the city's gay hub. The South Carolina poster features a generic image of a plantation, and hyped the state's antebellum architecture, golf courses and gay beaches...
...South Carolinians will be irate when they learn their hard-earned tax dollars are being spent to advertise our state as 'so gay,'" Thomas said in a statement. Following the uproar, the state's tourism department refused to pay the $5,000 advertising fee and has asked that the posters be removed, and a state employee has resigned. But as of Wednesday evening, the posters were still hanging in Leicester Square tube station...
...interview with TIME, the Senator explained that the advertisement is offensive to taxpayers who are not gay, and that it mischaracterizes the travel opportunities for gay men and women visiting his state. "They'll get off the plane and say, 'Where are the gay beaches?' and no one will know what they are talking about...
...South Carolina may in fact be "gayer" than many suspect. Andrew Roberts, CEO of Amro Worldwide, visited South Carolina after the state's tourism board expressed interest in the campaign, and says he toured several gay venues, including largely gay sections of mainstream beaches, in Charleston, Hilton Head Island and Myrtle Beach. "A few people in South Carolina need to wake up to what's going on in their state," he says. "There are more gay bars along that coastal strip than there are in Vegas...