Speaking personally, i think we should have relatively strict rules on avatars being SFW (bar obvious exceptions, like someone having a Bayonetta avatar), but be looser on signatures. That way those that like to express themselves with NSFW-esk stuff can do so (*waves at Captain_Yuri*), and those that don't want to see those signatures can simply turn them off. It's not a perfect solution, but i think both sides giving something up is preferable to one getting everything they want and the other nothing.
It's not like many use their signatures for such things anyway. This thread has over 100 posts, and there's only 1 person with anything NSFW-esk (*waves at Captain_Yuri again*), debatably 2 if we include whatever the heck is going on in Jason's signature :p
In an ideal world it'd be nice to give users more control over what they see in general though. Would be cool if the mods could tag signatures as NSFW, and users could choose weather they wanted to see those tagged signatures or not in their settings.