SALT LAKE CITY (AP) – Possibly because of a controversial gay T-shirt campaign aimed at teenagers, the Utah Department of Health has cut funding for the Gay Lesbian Bisexual Transgender Community Center of Utah’s anti-smoking efforts.

The campaign was funded by money from the tobacco industry settlement managed by the department.

Jennifer Nuttall, director for adult programs at the GLBT Center, believes the funding cut is directly related to a campaign that outfitted GLBT teenagers with T-shirts that said “Queers Kick Ash.”

At least four suburban Salt Lake City high school students were suspended for refusing to cover or change the shirts, which were created by a teen task force to combat the high rates of smoking among GLBT youth.

Hillcrest Principal Linda Sandstrom said the slogan was inappropriate because district policy bars clothes containing “advertising, promotions and likeness of tobacco, alcohol, or drugs or which are contrary to the educational mission” and “crude, vulgar, profane, violent, or sexually suggestive” messages.

The Department of Health issued a statement citing its “annual option not to renew this contract for state fiscal year 2005 and to redirect these funds to other community-based tobacco prevention and cessation services for high-risk groups.”

“The UDOH came to this decision in an attempt to prevent the anti-tobacco health message from being overshadowed by unrelated advocacy activity,” said UDOH public information officer Jana Kettering in a statement. “The UDOH remains concerned about tobacco use among this population and urges those served by the center to access available cessation services through their local health department or through the Utah Tobacco Quit Line.”

Nuttall said that’s an irresponsible, knee-jerk response to publicity created by the suspensions.

“They know and recognize that gay youth smoke more and are an at-risk, high-risk population,” Nuttall said. “They’re shooting themselves in the foot and going against their own objectives of protecting public health.”

Nuttall and the center plan to ask the Department of Health to reconsider.