In recent years, a wave of average citizens have taken a bold stand against our increasingly sexualized culture that continues to take hold of our entertainment industry, our politics and even our schools. One Wisconsin man is showing others just how much of a difference a single individual can make.
A few years ago, Jim Guell had become so fed up with a series of billboards that promoted local sex shops that he decided to take matters into his own hands. Guell is a 73-year-old retired insurance broker who resides in a mobile home park north of Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, directly adjacent to Route 41. A number of the sex shop advertisements could be seen in full view of his window — something that he had become increasingly annoyed about.
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“I got tired of seeing those advertisements, those boards, every time I came home,” Guell, a practicing Catholic, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel back in 2015. “I look out the window of my home and they’re lit at night and I thought, I’ve got to combat this some way.”
“It got to be too much,” he added, according to The Blaze. “I figured, well, a person needs to take a stand and raise these issues, and let people know what those businesses really are.”
So, Jim decided to contact public decency advocacy group Morality in Media (MIM) to come up with a plan for producing billboards with an alternative message.
Due to Guell’s hard work — and at the personal expense of $6,000 — the adult store advertisements were replaced by billboards declaring, “Porn Destroys Love” and “What would Jesus say about pornography?”
The new signs garnered a lot of attention from locals — something that encouraged Jim, a recovered porn addict, to do more to combat the proliferation of such destructive material.
“I know what kind of damage can be done and how much of an addiction it can turn out to be,” Guell explained, noting that pornography is the “greatest blight there is on society.”
Jim’s activism has even spurred Ronald Boda, who owned the billboard space where the adult store ads and Guell’s message are currently on display, to take the bold decision to post a second billboard of his own that simply reads: “Got God?”
“I felt obligated. God’s been good to me. It’s hard taking a solid religious stand when you believe in the freedom of speech,” Boda told the Sentinel. “It’s been a conflicting issue for me this whole time, but what do you do? What do you do?”
Boda noted that he allows certain messages he disagrees to be published on his billboards due to his views regarding the First Amendment.
Just yesterday, a grassroots sex-ed sit out united parents around the world against the introduction of explicit sex education curricula. As many choose to take protest against the increasingly sexualized atmosphere found in our schools, ask yourself: Is there something God is calling you to take a stand for, or against?
(H/T: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)