Saturday, May 5, 2012

School Says “Jesus” Shirt is Hate Speech


You are a good man, Charlie Brown and we shall stand beside you.

 “I plan to wear that t-shirt Monday, he said. “Not because I want to be disrespectful, not because I want to defy anybody, but because I believe this is the right thing to do.”

A Canadian high school student was suspended for a week because wore a t-shirt promoting his Christian beliefs and he was told if he wears it again – he could be suspended for the remainder of the school year.

William Swinimer, a student at Forest Heights Community School in Nova Scotia, was punished for wearing a shirt that read, “Life is wasted without Jesus.” The shirt is a reference to a passage of Scripture from the New Testament.

Swinimer told Fox News that he was told the shirt was a form of “hate talk.”

“I’ve been told by my principal that it is hate talk and is disrespectful to other people’s religions,” Swinimer said. “She said it (the shirt) cannot be in school because people would get offended.”
Nancy Pynch-Worthylake, the school board superintendent, told The Canadian Press that the wording on the shirt is “problematic.”

“If I have an expression that says, ‘My life is enhanced with Jesus,’ then there’s no issue with that, everybody is able to quickly understand that that’s my opinion about my own belief,” she told the newspaper. “If the shirt were to say, ‘Without Jesus, your life is a complete waste,’ then that’s clear that it is an opinion aimed at somebody else’s belief.”

Swinimer confirmed that he had been disciplined a number of times for wearing shirts with religious references.

“I’ve found that they have dissed Christianity quite a bit,” he said. “I do not want to be disrespectful of anybody else’s religions. I don’t want to put down anybody’s opinions. All I want to do is stand up for rights and freedoms of Canadians.”

2 comments:

  1. "I don't want to be disrespectful..."

    That's exactly the problem.

    Jesus had NO problem telling the Samaritan woman she didn't have a clue what she worshipped. The apostles had NO problem rebuking the pagans for their idolatries. The prophets of old - same story. Puritans, Pilgrims, Quakers, Methodists, Catholics, Protestants, Anabaptists, you name it - all of Christendom never had a problem 'tellin it like it is'...

    Until the last 20 years.

    And here we are.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Until the last 20 years. And here we are.

    Indeed.

    ReplyDelete