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All you want to do is get home, immersed in your favourite playlist and assiduously avoiding the chatty stranger sitting next to you. But lately, hopping on the bus also places you in the battleground for extreme political views – and some ugly ones at that.
In London, the mayor stepped in this week to stop the city's buses from carrying the latest ad campaign from a right-wing Christian group making the claim that therapy can convert gay people to heterosexuality.
As the Guardian reports, the ad, which would have run the length of several city buses, would have said: "Not gay! Ex-gay, post-gay and proud. Get over it!"
Funding for the ad came from a charity that supports so-called "reparative therapy" for gay Christians. The campaign was also backed by Anglican Mainstream, a church group that compares homosexuality to alcoholism, and acted as a direct response to an earlier bus advertisement by a gay rights group that read: "Some people are gay. Get over it."
Mayor Boris Johnson was quoted in the Guardian saying, "London is one of the most tolerant cities in the world and intolerant of intolerance. It is clearly offensive to suggest that being gay is an illness that someone recovers from and I am not prepared to have that suggestion driven around London on our buses."
Buses across North America have also become moving targets for various church and secular groups, mainly because they are relatively cheap and reach a wide audience. Recently, the Toronto Transit Commission approved an ad by the Islamic Infocentre that reads, "There is no God but Allah (and) Muhammad is His Messenger."
Allowing this kind of advertising has sparked criticism, to say nothing of creating a complicated balancing act for which messages are permissible and which are not.
Should public buses be available spaces for religious and social messaging?
Erin Anderssen