Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Uproar at Penn State over "Cross Like" T-Shirt










A blue, cross-like design emblazoned on T-shirts at Penn State University has some critics seeing red.

The shirts — intended to foster school spirit — sport a vertical blue line down the center with the words "Penn State White Out" emblazoned across the chest, forming a design that some say resembles a cross. The back of the shirt depicts the same blue line obscured by the words, "Don't be intimated … It's just me and 110,000 of my friends." Roughly 30,000 of the shirts have been sold.

Penn State says it has received six complaints about the shirt, including one from the Anti-Defamation League's Philadelphia branch, from people who say it connotes a Christian cross. The logo design also has become the focus of controversy in the student newspaper, "The Daily Collegian," which has received several letters to the editor on both sides of the issue.

Bill Mahon, vice president for university relations, said six people have contacted Penn State to voice their objections to the shirt's design.

"Six complaints is not a controversy," Mahon wrote Foxnews.com. "Students submit shirt designs to the student paper each year. Students then vote for their favorite design and they are sold in the campus bookstore."

Mahon said the design was based on the single blue stripe on the football team's helmets and will not be pulled from store shelves as some have asked. "The shirts have sold out and no changes are planned," he said.

Stephanie Bennis, a senior at the school, said she created the shirt's design in March with fellow public relations major Emily Sabolsky, and in no way did they intend to create religious overtones. Like Mahon, she said the single blue stripe is a nod to the university's football program.

"That was the entire idea," she said. "And all we thought was normally wording goes right across the chest. That's truly the reason why we did it."

Man fired from Home Depot for Wearing Pin that said "One Nation Under God, Indivisible"

OKEECHOBEE - Trevor Keezer didn't start working at The Home Depot to make a religious statement. He just wanted to earn money for college.

"I want to go to school to become a nurse," said the 20-year-old Okeechobee resident.

Keezer says for 19 months, ever since he started working as a cashier at The Home Depot in Okeechobee, he's worn a button with an American flag on it that reads: "One nation under God, indivisible."

Keezer sees the quotation, taken from the pledge of allegiance, as his way of supporting American troops at war, and of expressing his Christian faith.

In December, his older brother Army Spc. Steven Keezer Jr., is scheduled to deploy to Iraq for his second tour of duty.

For more than a year, Keezer says none of his managers mentioned the button on his Home Depot apron, except one supervisor who commented she liked it.

"She actually wanted to wear it," Keezer said.

Fishel says Home Depot has a "proud history" of supporting the military, and that it sanctions several of its own buttons for employees to wear, including one that reads: "United We Stand."

Keezer said he preferred to wear his button because "you can't have country without God. Every pin they showed me had no 'God' on it or anything."

Fishel says the company gives employees several warnings when they violate the dress policy before terminating them.

But Keezer says, "It never crossed my mind to take off the button because I'm standing for something that's bigger than I am. They kept telling me the severity of what you're doing and I just let God be in control and went with His plan."

Click to Read Full Article from the Sun-Sentinel
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JMC Ministries Thoughts

We just saw this young man interviewed on TV and knew we had to share this article with you. To us it is just the book of revelation coming true. It says Christians will be persecuted, you will not be able to buy, sell or do anything unless you have the mark of the beast. And slowly we are seeing this come to pass. This young man was fired because he stood up for Christian beliefs and for what the Pledge of Allegiance Stands for "One Nation Under God, Indivisible"

America What Have We become when people are now losing their jobs for wearing a patriotic pen that shares part of America's Pledge of Allegiance on it? And for this young man to lose his job at such a time when the the economy is so bad and jobs are so few and far between. How is he going to get the money that he was using to pay for his college education now that he has no job?

Please pray for this young man that he finds a new job quickly and can make ends meet so he can continue on with his education, and also that those who fired him will be saved and God just get ahold of their hearts and see the error of their ways. Please Pray.