Church complains about CBS and NBC rejecting ad

NEW YORK — The United Church of Christ complained Wednesday that CBS and NBC have rejected a 30-second ad for the denomination that portrays other churches as exclusionary to gays and lesbians.

In a letter to the church’s ad agency, CBS said the spot was unacceptable for broadcast on its network and UPN stations because it “touches on the exclusion of gay couples and other minority groups by other individuals and organizations.” The network also cited the fact that “the executive branch” had proposed a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage.

A CBS spokesman said the network has “a long-standing policy of not accepting advocacy advertising” and noted that a second ad by the United Church of Christ had been cleared to air later this month.

The rejected ad shows two men at a church refusing entry to a gay couple, among others. Then a screen reads: “Jesus didn’t turn people away. Neither do we.”

The ad began airing Tuesday on Fox and a dozen cable networks, including ABC Family, BET, Discovery, Nick at Nite and TNT. ABC told the church that it doesn’t accept any religious ads.

The ad that was accepted by CBS and NBC shows a diverse group of people, including gay couples, African Americans and seniors, reciting the old Sunday school ditty: “Here is the church, here is the steeple, open the doors and see all the people.”

It includes the same tag line about Jesus. Both ads end with a narrator who says: “No matter who you are, or where you are on life’s journey, you are welcome here.”

Barb Powell, spokeswoman for the United Church of Christ, called the two ads “almost identical” and said the church didn’t know why one was accepted and the other not.

Powell said the church “never intended to create a controversy with this ad,” it just wanted to convey a message that welcomes all Christians, including those who feel excluded or alienated from other church organizations.

Congregations of the United Church of Christ are autonomous, but the church has a history of fighting discrimination, and most member churches have openly welcomed gays and lesbians in recent years.

Creating controversial ads and then publicizing their rejection from the airwaves is an often-used tactic by advocacy groups to gain wider exposure for an issue and then free ad time as the rejected ad gets repeated over and over in news reports. Powell said the $1.7-million monthlong ad buy is the kickoff of a three-year campaign to attract more members and had been planned 18 months ago -- well before the presidential election, which included debate about gay marriage.

NBC’s head of broadcast standards, Alan Wurtzel, said NBC, like CBS, had accepted a second ad, which he called “positive.” The other controversial ad was rejected in February, he said, because “it violates our long-standing policy. We do not accept commercials that deal with issues of public controversy. The problem with this spot is it says churches do not accept these people. That’s a controversial topic that is in the papers every day.”

Among advocacy ads rejected by CBS this year were an anti-Bush spot from the political group MoveOn.org, one from the animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and one from the city of Las Vegas. All sought to be broadcast during the Super Bowl.

Gloria Tristani, a former Federal Communications Commission member who heads the United Church of Christ’s Washington, D.C.-based Office of Communication, said the rejection of the ad is emblematic of “big media powers exercising their control over the airwaves to let, or not let, people see what they see fit.”