I don't know if it slipped through the cracks of the editors of the West Seattle Harold or if they just didn't think it through, but the Sherman Supply ad in the Harold's Explorer magazine was certainly over the top as far as physical exposure.

Showing the naked butts of men and women to promote their product shows a lack of respect to the community in which we live in and they serve, and I certainly would not want my children to see that ad or others like it.

Though the human body is beautiful, I believe that certain parts of the human body are best kept unexposed and butts are one of those parts. With all the negative effects of the "sexualization" of our society, we don't need any extra, especially in our local paper.

Much of these negative effects have been the "girls gone wild" syndrome, which has young girls posting nude pictures of themselves on the Internet, allowing boyfriends to photograph them in the nude, and making their own amateur porn videos. You might wonder how I think an ad like this can feed into this syndrome.

It goes with what is called the "frog in the beaker" scenario. If you take a frog and place them on a hot skillet they will immediately jump out, but if you take a frog and put it in a beaker of water and slowly turn up the heat, they will stay in that water till they cook.

Since the so-called "summer of love" and the "free love" movement of the 60's there has been a steady erosion of the morals of our nation and community. At this point the heat's on high and the affects are disastrous. Affects such as early sexual involvement, unwanted pregnancies, abortions, fatherless children, pedophilia, STD's, divorce, suicide, domestic violence and mental illness, just to name a few.

Some of us need to wake up from thinking that the sexual revolution of the 60's was a totally positive thing and realize that we, our children, our grandchildren and our society as a whole are beginning to cook. Theodore Roosevelt once said, "It is no use to preach to (children) if you do not act decently yourself."

We, as adults, need to set a good example for our children and take action when something seemingly as innocuous as this ad shows itself in our community paper as well as anything else that's over the top. __

Pastor Randy Leskovar

Calvary Chapel

West Seattle