GERMAN parties are breaking new taboos in a closely fought election campaign, using posters of naked lesbians and gays, thinly veiled innuendo and even a reference to smoking cannabis to sway voters, Bild am Sonntag newspaper said yesterday.Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s Social Democrats are neck and neck with Edmund Stoiber’s conservatives in opinion polls ahead of the September 22 election and some of the racy campaign tactics are causing quite a storm. The most controversial poster belongs to the Green party, junior partners in the ruling center-left coalition. It depicts two topless same-sex couples, one male, one female, with one partner in each pair holding the other’s nipple. The poster is modelled on a 16th century French Mannerist painting and carries the message “Equal rights for lesbians, gays and heteros.” The poster has drawn fire from religious leaders and local authorities. “This goes way beyond the borders of good taste. With these kind of posters, the party automatically disqualifies itself,” Christoph Heckeley, a spokesman for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Cologne, said.The town of Koenigstein near Frankfurt has banned the poster and was considering slapping a fine on the Greens, who have between 6 percent and 7 percent of the vote in opinion polls. The Greens responded by painting bikini tops over the offending breasts. Schroeder’s glossy posters depict him as a statesman and problem-solver. But the youth wing of his Social Democrats has adopted a steamy slogan to convince voters that after four years in power the party’s reforms are just beginning. A picture of two lips pursed in a kiss promises: “That was just foreplay. The peak is yet to come.” “Today I’ll have a shag. Tomorrow I’ll smoke a joint. The day after that I’ll vote,” said a party advertisement in the left-wing Tageszeitung newspaper. (SD-Agencies)