Billboard tries to deter people from patronizing adult stores

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. -- The canary yellow letters on the large billboard along Interstate 44 in Pulaski County read: ADULT SUPERSTORE.

Reaching even higher into the sky is another billboard that announces: "Pornography destroys all people."

The second billboard is paid for by the Pulaski County Ministerial Alliance, which views the proliferation of adult bookstores, cabarets and arcades as a pornographic cancer eating away residents' values.

The alliance purchased billboards -- costing up to $600 a month -- near I-44 exits to shout its belief.

Alliance members hope the signs deter people from patronizing places such as the Lion's Den Adult Superstore, a new business in Buckton, and Big Louie Too's, a complex featuring an exotic dance club, adult novelty shop, tattoo salon and package-liquor store. Both stores have signs to attract travelers on I-44.

"Quite frankly, there are other places our church could find to spend the money," pastor Richard Bushey, whose First Church of the Nazarene is across the street from the Lion's Den, said of the congregation's contribution to purchase anti-porn signs. "We're trying to fight something that shouldn't be here."

The Lion's Den, one store in a chain of 28 throughout 10 states, occupies a building that once housed the Ted Williams Steakhouse. Within a quarter-mile there are four churches. And where cooks once flipped steaks, shoppers now browse aisles of the "superstore" lined with sex toys, lingerie and sex videos 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

"It's just like Wal-Mart, just with different merchandise," store manager Robert Sowards said while straightening sex toys hanging on the wall. "We get people coming in here from age 18 and up. All ages. All types of people."

Sowards said the alliance's signs -- posted in late December -- haven't hampered business since his store opened.

"Actually, the place kind of picked up," said the manager of the Lion's Den. "I guess when people look up and see their billboard all lit up, they see ours, too, and they turn in."

Five miles east in St. Robert, Louie Keen, owner of Big Louie's, feels the same way.

"It draws more attention to us," Keen said. "People are gonna come here no matter what."