An advertisement the Gay Police Association (GPA) published in the U.K. newspaper, The Independent, was pulled for implying Christians were responsible for a huge rise in "hate crime" attacks on homosexuals.

The ad depicted a Bible and a pool of blood under text that read "in the name of the father." It also claimed the GPA has recorded a 74 percent increase in homophobic incidence where the only or main motivating factor was the perpetrator's religious beliefs.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) received 553 objections, including those made by the Christian groups Christian Watch, The Trinitarian Bible Society and The Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches.

Complainants said the GPA did not provide evidence for its statistics and that the ad implied that the attacks were all violent and all perpetrated by Christians.

The GPA said that the ad's accompanying text made clear that non-Christian religions were also accountable, and they said that the ad was intended to be "thought-provoking," not to accuse all religious people of homophobia.

The ASA agreed with the complainants, ruling Wednesday that "by featuring spilled blood prominently, the ad suggested that all the reported incidents involved physical injury. On this point, the advert breached the truthfulness code."

The ASA told the GPA to "ensure future campaigns were not presented in a way that could cause undue offense" and that it must "ensure any statistics could be substantiated."