Sick of the Smut on Billboards

I am sick of seeing billboards advertising strip clubs and adult smut shops, and so I wrote a letter that I have sent to a number of advertisers in the Houston area.

What does it say about a company that they are willing to degrade women, invite men to become lascivious beasts, and pervert the impressionable young women and men of our society by selling advertising space to these peddlers of smut, shame, and sorrow?

Do these companies want adolescent boys to see the enticing women on these billboards and conclude that women are objects for the sexual gratification of men? Do they want the young men of our society to be lured into the degrading, enslaving perversion of sexuality offered by the porn industry?

Do these companies want young women to see these billboards and conclude that they are objects for the sexual gratification of men? Or, do they want the young women to conclude that the way for them to gain power over men is through the reduction of those men to drooling, lustful beasts?

Not only am I sick of these billboards, I am realizing that as my 2 year old little boy continues to observe the world around him, he’ll soon see this trash.

I think that any company that sells advertising space to the smut peddlars ought to hear from people who don’t want to have such advertisements imposed upon them.

Unlike commercials on television, billboards can’t be turned off. Nor can you change the channel or make sure that these ads are only seen after the little ones have gone to bed. There the smut is in broad daylight, imposing its call to destructive, degrading, adulterous, home-wrecking immorality on anyone who has to use the roadway.

Why should these companies force these obscenities upon the general public?

One advertiser I contacted gave me the names of several advertisers who, according to this person, sell space to the smut-peddlers in Houston, TX.

Here are their names, phone numbers, website addresses, and emails:

CBS Outdoor (formerly Viacom Outdoor)
– Randy Jackson, VP/General Manager
– 713-868-2284
– http://www.cbsoutdoor.com/
– randy.jackson@cbsoutdoor.com

SignAd
– Wesley Gilbreath, President
– 713-861-6013
– http://www.signad.com/

JGI Outdoor
– Carrie Kirkland VP
– 281-992-2828
– http://www.jgioutdoor.com/
– ckirkland@jgioutdoor.com

I spoke on the phone with representatives of these three companies. The only one who did not deny his culpability was Randy Jackson of CBS Outdoor. He would only say that he had forwarded the email I sent on to the cooperate office and they would contact me.

Here’s the letter I sent to each of these companies and several others (including the Mayor of Houston and the Governor of Texas):

My wife and I moved to Houston in the summer of 2003. We were immediately struck by one very unpleasant aspect of the city. There are smutty billboards everywhere, and in my judgment this is the ugliest aspect of Houston. Billboards advertising strip clubs, signs advertising adult movie stores, and billboards advertising adult smut shops. The drive on 45 South from where I live in the Clear Lake area to where I work at 610 and 45 South is particularly heinous.

To put this in context, we had previously lived in Dallas from 1996 to 2000, and then we lived in Louisville, KY from 2000 to 2003. So it is not as though we are moving to the big city from a rural area. Upon my arrival in Houston, I was shocked at the nasty feel all the smut signs give to the city of Houston.

I am now writing because our first son has recently turned 2 years old, and with our second son on the way it occurs to me that one day they will notice these billboards.

THIS IS NOT THE WAY THAT I WANT MY BOYS TO THINK ABOUT WOMEN! These signs present women as objects of lust, and they portray a false and destructive approach to human sexuality–the message conveyed by these signs is that a man should use whomever and whatever he can to maximize his own pleasure.

So aside from the detrimental affect these signs have on the youth of the city, I ask you to consider the way that all these filthy advertisments present the city to visitors. Neither Dallas nor Louisville, nor Chicago, nor I daresay any other great city in this free land so lewdly invites its people to behave like beasts.

Please do whatever you can to reduce and hopefully rid this fair city of these unclean sirens that lure her citizens into smut, filth, and moral degradation.

Please consider the young boys, the adolescents, and the men seeking to be faithful to their wives, and please act.

Please refuse to sell your advertising space to those peddling smut.

Thank you for your consideration, and may God bless your efforts.

Pleading for the cultivation of nobility and virtue in our city,

Jim Hamilton

James M. Hamilton Jr., Th.M., Ph.D.

I hope you’ll join me in calling for the removal of this smut from the billboards of the land.