PHILADELPHIA -
A billboard with a naughty take on a biblical admonishment is causing drivers to do a double-take and nearby residents to sound off.
"Really?" Darlene Smith asked our Bruce Gordon when he asked about the billboard that went up on northbound I-95 just south of the Allegheny Ave. exit January 16. "This is what the world has come to, you just want to cheat on the person you're with- your spouse? Then why did you marry them in the first place?"
The billboard is hard to miss.
It features the commandment "Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery" with the "Not" crossed out, next to a picture of former porn star and Charlie Sheen "goddess" Bree Olson, in a pose that suggest she's asking you to keep a naughty secret.
The billboard advertises ArrangementFinders.com, a Toronto-based Internet dating site that sets up what it calls "Mutually Beneficial Arrangements" between middle aged men looking for a hot date, and 20-something women looking for a man with a few bucks in his pocket.
If the guy happens to be married? Whatever...
"It should come down," said Beth Walczak, who lives near the billboard in the city's Port Richmond section. "It should not be there." Walczak told Gordon the billboard sends the message that "people can do whatever they want- that it's okay. And it shouldn't be like that."
"I don't cheat on my wife," said neighborhood resident John Opalka, in describing the sign as "trash. I'm faithful. I have a family."
Mary Tracy fights an often-losing battle against the proliferation of billboards, as Executive director of Scenic Philadelphia.
"I think it's frustrating for the people who live there and have to look at it 24/7," said Tracy. "It's a real stigma on neighborhoods."
Tracy says First amendment rights of advertisers often trump neighborhood concerns.
But messages that promote adultery?
"It just seems like, how much further down are we going to fall, in our society? And that, to me, is very sad."
An ArrangementFinders.com spokesman tells Gordon that the Philly billboard is just the company's second in the U.S., with the first going up near Atlantic City. He notes that- despite the complaints from some, the Philadelphia region provides his company with lots of clients. Dating on the Down-Low
This new billboard along northbound I-95 just south of the Allegheny Ave. exit in Philadelphia has some doing double takes and others saying it goes too far.
