Some same-sex parents of young children in New York City's Chelsea neighborhood are having issues with the pornography shops that dot Eighth Avenue, calling for them to shutter because they're worried about the shops affecting the welfare of their children.

The shops, though they don't dabble in prostitution or drug trafficking like some allege, are known to occasionally promote things like SFW gay porn DVD covers, lube displays and even dildos in street-facing window displays.

Local residents, however, claim what's happening inside is much more sinister. Via the New York Times:

Several of the shops are open 24 hours. Neighbors complain that they find used condoms and latex gloves in front of their homes, have light bulbs removed to darken their vestibules and see men having sex in the hours before dawn on playground benches. They say male hustlers are drawn to the area, including men who charge for sex in the booths in the rear of the shops.

"I’m pretty liberal, but I’m conservative when it comes to raising children," Scott McCormick, a gay father of two, told the Times. "There are several schools in the neighborhood — every day we’re walking past these stores 10 times."

Even members of the LGBT community who once visited the seedy stores in their younger years have turned their back on them. Another father of a young child told the Times he'd also like to see the shops shutter, but noted it would be "hypocritical" to go on record saying as much because he once frequented the shops.

The NYPD has said they'd help fix the problems of hustling, public sex and/or drug trafficking if only they could find them. Deputy Inspector Michelle Irizarry, commanding officer of the 10th Precinct, called the neighborhood's complaints "exaggerated":

"We aren’t seeing what they are seeing, and they are not calling us to these locations when they see these things. If they could show me one location where there are condoms or any sort of paraphernalia that would indicate any sexual activity occurring on the street, we would certainly be amenable to addressing that."

The shops aren't routinely raided by police as they once were — the NYPD stopped performing gay witch hunts in the neighborhood after falsely arresting and charging 41 men with prostitution in 2008 and 2009, a mistake that cost the city almost a half a million dollars in legal settlements.

The shops may not stay forever but the effect they've had on the community will be lasting:

One father described cooking dinner recently and asking his 6-year-old son, who loves helping out, to get him the olive oil. The boy, remembering something he had seen on Eighth Avenue, looked up at his father and said, "Dad, why don’t we use the Boy Butter?"

Yes dad, why don't you use the Boy Butter?