Gay car site gets unwanted “Yes on 8” ads

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Gaywheels.com, a website aimed at gay car buyers, said the ad space on its home page was ‘hijacked’ today by supporters of Proposition 8, the ballot initiative that would ban same-sex marriage in California.

Joe LaMuraglia, publisher of the New Jersey-based website, was in Tennessee this afternoon when he found out that folks in California who went to www.gaywheels.com were being greeted with a page festooned with ‘Yes on 8’ ads.

‘We are very upset about this and apologize to any site visitors from the state of California that might have been offended by the ads,’ LaMuraglia said in a statement posted on the site.

‘They in no way reflect our political beliefs and for the record are diametrically opposed to our value system.’

How the ads got on the site is a bit of a mystery.

The ads apparently were placed through Google’s AdSense service, which LaMuraglia uses to generate ad revenue for Gaywheels.com. LaMuraglia said it was his understanding that his agreement with Google allowed him to block all political advertising from his site and until today, no political ads had ever appeared on Gaywheels.com.

Google has been a bit opaque in explaining how the Proposition 8 ad got on the site, he said. And even after LaMuraglia demanded that the ads be removed, a couple of hours passed before they were gone.

A spokeswoman for the pro-Proposition 8 campaign denied targeting its ads at Gaywheels.com.

‘We didn’t do anything wrong,’ said Meg Waters. ‘We did give Google money to put ads on the Internet, but it was up to Google where they went. If they [Gaywheels.com] have a problem, it’s with Google.’

She said ‘Yes on 8’ campaign officials weren’t even aware of the Gaywheels.com ads until asked about them by Up to Speed.

‘Google knows what we’re looking for in terms of demographics,’ Waters said. ‘That wasn’t a demographic we were shooting for.’

A Google spokeswoman said the company ‘allows ads that advocate for a particular political position regardless of the views that they represent. We currently allow ads advocating both for and against Proposition 8.’

The company didn’t comment on LaMuraglia’s claim that his deal with Google stipulates that no political ads can be placed on his site.

LaMuraglia, a 13-year veteran of the automotive industry who launched Gaywheels.com more than three years ago, said he’s concerned that the ads would damage his site’s credibility, which is based in part on staying out of politics.

‘A very large percentage of my traffic comes from California,’ said LaMuraglia, who said the site gets up to 40,000 unique visitors a month.

‘They may see the ads and think I’m some hypocritical gay guy who is taking money from anybody and has no morals. I won’t even accept ads from companies that aren’t gay-friendly.’

That wouldn’t include Google. The company declared its opposition to Proposition 8 in September but has not given a corporate donation to fight the measure. Founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin recently gave $40,000 and $100,000, respectively, to the ‘No on 8’ campaign.

-- Martin Zimmerman

Website screen grab from Gaywheels.com