Did The NRA Try To Seduce The Gay Vote With Ads On Grindr?
The Republicans have tried to court the gay vote before, but now it looks like the NRA is turning to Grindr to get horny guys to back a pro-gun, anti-LGBT candidate.
Wow, hitting us right where we live, huh guys?
The Daily Beast reported earlier this month that at least two Grindr users reported seeing banner ads for Rep. Tom Cotton, a Republican running for Senate in Arkansas.
After the Daily Beast contacted Grindr, a spokesman for the app said it would stop running the banner, which came from a “third-party ad network.”
“While we do have safeguards in place to monitor for ads on third-party networks, we do serve billions of ads on our network, so there is the occasional chance that ads like this may appear,” the spokesman said. “In this instance, we’ve reached out to the third-party networks to have these ads removed.”
He added that it's Grindr policy to block “political advertising through third-party ad networks.”
Meanwhile Majority Strategies, the firm that placed the NRA's online-ad buys, claims the screenshot was doctored and the ad was never placed. Joel Simkhai, the CEO of Grindr, said in a statement that his company didn't know of any such ad, either.
But, as the Daily Beast points out, Cotton wouldn't be the first GOP candidate to pop up on the world's most popular gay hookup site.
@swin24 @thedailybeast Not just Tom Cotton. @Rep_Southerland getting in on the action too: pic.twitter.com/BWME2mc1se
— Anders Croy (@Ders850) October 29, 2014
Well, Cotton also opposes legislation that would ban workplace discrimination against gays and lesbians, and gets backing from the National Organization for Marriage. He also says women are to blame for most divorces, and thinks they shouldn't be allowed to serve in the military.
Cotton advertising on Grindr could almost as bad as Cotton actually having a profile on Grindr.
One nice thing that's come out of this controversy, though: We've discovered Cotton Candy, a Twitter account purportedly run by the just-married candidate's openly gay alter ego.
— Cotton Candy (@CottonCandyAR) March 17, 2014
Oh that's rich.