According to a BBC story, Great Britain’s Advertising Standards Authority concluded that a certain downloadable leaflet was misleading. Healing on the Streets (HOTS), the group distributing the misleading message, was banned from spreading it.
The claim?
God can heal you.
Need Healing? God can heal today! Do you suffer from Back Pain, Arthritis, MS, Addiction … Ulcers, Depression, Allergies, Fibromyalgia, Asthma, Paralysis, Crippling Disease, Phobias, Sleeping disorders or any other sickness?
Such fairly standard religious adverts, according to the government office, “could encourage false hope and were irresponsible.”
Oh, papa, how far we have come. Now they’re actually forcing perfectly respectable churches not to lie.
I loved this little understated tidbit in the story:
The group, based in Bradford-on-Avon, Wiltshire, said it was disappointed with the decision and would appeal.
If this happened in the U.S., any real accounting of the thing would say:
The group, based in Alabama, fucking shrieked. Everybody they knew fucking shrieked. GOP presidential candidates for the next 4 elections fucking shrieked.
Besides, nobody takes those guys seriously. Hey, any God *I* might be willing to believe in would have to be able to heal stupidity, flatulence, baldness, 98-pound-weakling syndrome, pork belly, Cambrian explosion, pulled mussel, open sowers, French cuffs, the Oxford comma, rusted quarter panels, Rin-Tin-Tin-itis, and the tendency to become a Republican presidential candidate.