Apple removes anti-gay and anti-abortion rights app

Dec. 1, 2010 12:01 PM PT

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Apple has taken down an iPhone app that condemns gay marriage and abortion after nearly 8,000 people signed a petition in protest.

The app was based on the Manhattan Declaration, a document signed by Christian leaders in 2009 that criticizes abortion as the “cheapening of life” and a “license to kill” and refers to homosexual relationships as “sexual immorality” that could “lock into place the false and destructive belief that marriage is all about romance and other adult satisfactions.”

The app sent users through a four-step survey in which answers that reflect support of gay rights or abortion rights earn a failing score. The app had originally featured a 4+ rating on the App Store, a sign that Apple found no objectionable content.

A petition on Change.org urging Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs to remove the “hate fest” garnered more than 7,700 signatures -– which Manhattan Declaration organizers called a “small but very vocal protest.”

Sometime over the Thanksgiving holiday, Apple pulled down the app, saying in a statement that “it violates our developer guidelines by being offensive to large groups of people.’

In an e-mail to Jobs, ManhattanDeclaration.org contended that its declaration was written in “civil, non-inflammatory and respectful” language.

“We emphasize with great sincerity that ‘disagreement’ is not ‘gay-bashing,’ ” the group wrote on its website. “The Manhattan Declaration clearly calls its signers to reject ‘disdainful condemnation’ of those who disagree and declares that all people are worthy of respect, because all are loved by God.”

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-- Tiffany Hsu

Top photo: Apple CEO Steve Jobs. Credits, from top: Jim Watson/AFP; ManhattanDeclaration.org.

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Tiffany Hsu

Tiffany Hsu is a former staff writer for the Los Angeles Times. Previously, she wrote about the California economy, fast food, restaurants, retail and alternative energy for the Business section. A Bay Area native, UC Berkeley graduate and eternal Nor-Cal fan, she once worked for the San Francisco Bay Guardian. She also did a stint at the Richmond Times-Dispatch, where she developed a passion for sweet tea. She still has faith that someday she’ll find two economists who agree.