Michelle Visage's PrEP Ad Never Says 'HIV.' One Million Moms Wants It Pulled.

One Million Moms has picked a fight with a television commercial in which nobody has sex, nobody says the word HIV, and nobody mentions LGBTQ+ people. It stars Michelle Visage — and per LGBTQ Nation, her judging role on RuPaul's Drag Race was enough on its own for the group to treat her as a bad influence.

The conservative Christian group is petitioning TV Land to stop running the PrEP commercials, which are funded by the HIV-focused drugmaker ViiV Healthcare. As The Independent reported, the 35-second spot has Visage walking through the questions a patient considering PrEP might want to put to their doctor — PrEP being the medication that significantly reduces the risk of HIV infection during sex. LGBTQ Nation notes that the ad assumes you already know what long-acting injectable PrEP is; it does not mention sex, HIV, or the community it is largely aimed at.

One Million Moms starts with tone. In a statement on its website, quoted by The Independent, the group calls TV Land “a Paramount-affiliated network commonly known for providing nostalgic, wholesome, and familiar comedy shows without the need for edgy programming” — a channel that, in its telling, “steps out of line” by carrying the PrEP spots.

It does give a substantive reason too, and it's worth putting on the record: per LGBTQ Nation, the group argues the ad ran when children could be watching because it “targets individuals at risk of HIV, including members of the LGBTQ community.” LGBTQ Nation's answer to that is the obvious one — the ad doesn't actually mention LGBTQ+ people.

Then it gets to Visage. Because she judges RuPaul's Drag Race, the group wrote that it is “no surprise that many of those ads include transgender and cross-dressing individuals.”

Visage is neither transgender nor cross-dressing — a point The Independent states plainly. That reads to us less like a complaint about what is in the commercial than about who is allowed to appear in one.

What the petition actually says

The group's petition, quoted by LGBTQ Nation, complains that TV Land is “currently airing commercials for PrEP Wisdom, a campaign targeting the prevention of HIV through sexual activity” and calls the spots “highly irresponsible.” It leans on scheduling: “When airing before prime time, children are likely watching television shows such as The Andy Griffith Show. I urge TV Land to pull these controversial commercials from its network immediately.”

On the group's website, per LGBTQ Nation, it asks: “Can you imagine what goes through the mind of a child, tween, or teen when seeing this ad? A parent never expects to discuss sexuality or homosexuality while sitting at home enjoying family time.”

How many people have signed depends on which outlet you read: The Independent put it at more than 8,000, while LGBTQ Nation put it at around 7,000.

One Million Moms is an offshoot of the American Family Association, and by LGBTQ Nation's account it “routinely directs its outrage at completely innocuous depictions of LGBTQ+ people in cultural products.” The back catalogue it lists includes campaigns against a same-sex kiss in Netflix's animated Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous, against Highlights for acknowledging that gay people exist, against Scholastic's LGBTQ+ inclusive children's books, against Parents magazine over a same-sex couple on its pages, and against advertising from TurboTax, KFC, Jackson Hewitt and Bounce dryer sheets. In May it called for a ratings system flagging LGBTQ+ content in children's programming.

The thing worth being annoyed about

Strip out the outrage and there's a real number underneath this. The Independent reports that an estimated 2.2 million people in the US could benefit from PrEP and around 25% of them are taking it. ViiV's own director of enterprise communications, Robin Gaitens, gave MediaPost a slightly smaller denominator in June: “The CDC says there are about 2 million Americans who could benefit from PrEP, but only about 25% of those are actually using it.” The two figures disagree; the share does not. Roughly three out of four people who could be protected aren't.

That gap is why companies keep spending on PrEP awareness at all, as MediaPost puts it. MediaPost reported at the June launch that ViiV's paid media runs across streaming and cable including Bravo, Hulu, Logo, Paramount+ and Peacock, with five spots planned; two had aired by mid-June. One sets Visage in a nightclub, another poolside. Both open with her saying it's time to get some PrEP wisdom and close on the instruction to ask your doctor. (The trade press calls the campaign PrEP Wise; One Million Moms' petition and The Independent refer to the ads as PrEP Wisdom. The campaign's URL is GetPrEPWisdom.com.)

ViiV said at launch that the point was to “empower people to make informed decisions about long-acting injectable (LAI) HIV prevention, beyond the dosing schedules.” Gaitens told MediaPost the campaign is “not really pushing the injectable PrEP option… as much as raising awareness that there are differences among injectable PrEP options on the market.” Asked about rival products entering the category, Gaitens added: “We hope that people who can benefit from PrEP will start using it — it's the only way we're going to be able to end the epidemic.”

Visage's own statement at the launch, reported by The Independent, ran along similar lines. “HIV prevention is not one-size-fits-all, and injectable PrEP options are not the same. Everyone's day-to-day life, needs, and comfort level are different,” she said, adding that real empowerment means knowing your options well enough that you can “work with your doctor to determine what may work best for you.”

Here's our read: a petition demanding the removal of an ad that never says HIV is not a content complaint, it's a visibility complaint. And the cost of winning it would land on the three in four people who could be on PrEP and aren't.

The Independent says it has approached Visage for comment. We found no public response from TV Land to the petition in any of the coverage we read.