WASHINGTON, D.C.—One might think there's not a lot of money involved in supplying a service that hooks up married guys to women who are available for affairs, but apparently one would be wrong. At least one service, AshleyMadison.com, makes enough from its reported 4 million members to hire tanker truck drivers, like Remy Santiago, to tour major metropolitan areas with their trucks sporting the message "Life Is Short. Have An Affair."
"Younger couples [honk] their horns, putting their thumbs up," Santiago told Fox News' D.C. affiliate. "[Older people say] I'm nasty. Why am I doing that? That I'm promoting affairs."
Apparently, the trucks are necessary because most TV and radio stations won't accept advertising from the site.
On the other hand, the United States Secret Service knows a threat when it sees one, and according to a report from the evangelical right-wing Family Research Council (FRC), Secret Service agents ordered Santiago's truck out of the parking lot of Redskins Park, home to the Washington Redskins football team.
But simply shooing the truck from the park wasn't good enough for FRC president Tony Perkins.
"I don't disagree with their judgment," Perkins wrote, "although it is a sad commentary that a company encouraging infidelity is removed from a family-friendly event—a football game—not because it is immoral but because of a perceived potential threat."
The threat as the Service saw it, Perkins charged, was not to football fans or the institution of marriage, but to "federal officeholders"—presumably including Sens. David Vitter and John Ensign and all the other undisclosed congressional roués.
"There is also great irony that in the same city where City Council members are seeking to grant marriage rights to same-sex unions, this overt, profit-driven effort to destroy marriages finds a haven," Perkins further complained. "No political party or philosophy is immune. We deplore as readily the extra-marital affairs of nationally known Republicans and Democrats. When you assail marriage, you promote adultery and attack the family, including little children. As to this despicable website, they're totally wrong. Life is not short. It is eternal. And we must consider the eternal consequences of infidelity."
But considering past adulterers like Sen. John McCain and former House speaker Newt Gingrich, those "eternal consequences" apparently don't include getting voted out of office.
