The State should pay attention to real problems of youth in Bulgaria, like poverty, lack of education and violence, and not gay advertisement.

That was the message that Bulgarian gay organisation Gemini sent out in a statement in reaction to the taking down of billboards picturing Azis and Kitaetsa in the centre of Sofia, mediapool.bg said.

The take-down had been ordered by Sofia municipality. The billboards were part of an advertisement campaign for a new television station, which was said to be owned by Krasimir Gergov.

Azis would be hosting a late-night program on the new television station.

Azis was shown on the billboards, naked to the waist, biting the beard of his partner Kitaetsa.

For three days local media have been commenting the case, which has turned out to be good PR for the new television station, mediapool.bg commented.

"Does society really believe that a picture of two half-naked men, shot close to one another, is immoral? Yes! Because that same society elevates to cult status big-breasted folk-singers," the Gemini statement said. "How would that society have reacted to the billboards, if, instead of Kitaetsa, the picture would include a silicone-star, of the pop-folk variety for example?," mediapool.bg quoted the Gemini statement as saying.

Gemini accused Bulgarian society of having different standards for men, women and homosexuals and said society still does not accept diversity.

According to Gemini, what public images were "morally acceptable" was a matter of mentality and Bulgarians' cultural, social tolerance.

"An entire generation likes serial, industrially produced blond pop-folk-barbies, about whom one can argue whether they can sing or think, but it does not accept even the idea that two homosexual men have feelings. It does not accept the fact that happiness of children of "normal" people, could be with someone from the same gender," the Gemini statement said.

Media expert Georgi Lozanov said "the esthetics of Planeta television (a local pop-folk channel - ed.) was more dramatic in every aspect, than the billboards of Azis and Kitaetsa". The only difference was that there, the basis was heterosexual and not homosexual, Dnevnik quoted Lozanov as saying to Focus news agency.