Marital cheats’ website billboard to be scrapped after protest
A DATING website encouraging having affairs has bowed to pressure from campaigners tonight and removed its billboard close to London’s Canary Wharf. Directors of the Marital Affairs’ website have received a deluge of emails and phonecalls complaining
EXCLUSIVE by Johnny McDevitt
A DATING website encouraging married men and women to have affairs has bowed to pressure tonight from campaigners and are to remove its billboard close to Canary Wharf, alone with others around Britain.
Directors of the Marital Affairs’ website have received a deluge of emails and phonecalls complaining about the billboard.
A 2,600-strong Facebook group, Stop maritalaffair.co.uk advertising publicly in the UK, had been urging people to campaign for its removal.
Their campaign tonight appears to have been successful.
A website spokeswoman told the East London Advertiser: “We have instructed our agency to remove ads from our current campaign in light of recent developments.
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“People have the right to chose their own lifestyle. Marital Affairs’ provides a safe and secure outlet for those who are considering this.”
The billboard on the busy Lower Lea Crossing dual-carriageway at Blackwall, near the Isle of Dogs, features a shirtless man with a bra dangling over his shoulder.
East End campaigner Bex White was so incensed that she contacted Tower Hamlets councillor Tim Archer.
She said: “It is a free country, but this promotion of extra-marital affairs is offensive to those who have been hurt by them, adults and children alike, and to those who believe in the value of strong marriages.”
The Facebook group launched its campaign after receiving a rejection letter from the Advertising Standards Agency saying it would not ban the ad because it did not offend against “widely accepted moral, social or cultural standards.”
The content and presentation were not explicit, it said, and was “unlikely to cause serious or widespread offence or be seen as irresponsible.”
