Home Depot fires “patriotic Christian” whilst supporting LGBT folks; AFA throws a fit. Movie at 11

Pro-LGBT Home Depot employees [source]

It would seem that when I followed the American Family Association’s suggestion last week and sent an email to Sears expressing my feelings (ie. support) over them selling erotic posters over their website, the form I filled in at the AFA’s website apparently had the unexpected effect of subscribing me to their newsletters. I suppose I ought to have searched for any conspicuous checkboxes to deactivate, but no matter, for now I get updates whenever they engage in their amusing Christian Persecution Complex inanity.

This time, the AFA is stompin’ mad that a Home Depot employee was fired for wearing a “One Nation Under God” button on his work clothes while on the job when many other employees proudly boast pro-LGBT insignia on their own aprons. To wit [original emphasis]:

The Home Depot fired a employee for refusing to remove a "One nation under God" patriotic button from his work apron. Trevor Keezor, a Christian, said he wore the button to support his country and his 27-year-old brother, who serves in the military in Iraq (story and video here).

Dozens of homosexual employees participated in Home Depot-sponsored gay pride parades and festivals. Many employees wore numerous buttons on their aprons promoting homosexuality.

The Home Depot defended them by saying homosexual employees will not be prohibited "in any way" when it comes to what they do and wear. The picture here shows employees actually decorating their aprons for a Lesbian and Gay Film Festival in Seattle, Washington.

So...if you wear a "One Nation Under God" button, you will be fired. If you wear a "gay" button, you get company praise.

They then give links encouraging readers to boycott the Home Depot, to bitch at the store manager, spread the whining on Facebook, and etc., links that I shan’t repost here because I’m too lazy to, and I don’t want those websites getting any hits off of my blog (however inconsequential such traffic may be).

However, before we go any further, I’d like to point out to you that the story of Trevor Keezer is nothing new – literally. It actually dates back to late October of 2009, which is also when I wrote about it. The reports also include a few little details that the AFA newsletter innocuously omits, such as the fact that Keezer had actually been wearing that “One Nation Under God” button for over a year, despite his employers’ repeated warnings and reprimands, and that he even began bringing his Bible to work shortly before finally being fired for breaking the dress code.

What’s quickly become clear is that this is no case of Christian persecution (as these stories reliably fail to be with a minimum of scrutiny), but merely of an employee who deliberately ignored the rules and ended up losing his job over it. It might have sounded a bit petty to terminate someone’s employment over something as silly as a patriotic button, even if it did contain a not-too-subtle endorsement of Christianity, but the point was that Keezer disobeyed his bosses over and over again over a period of several months. There was just no way he’d keep his job with that attitude. Rule #01 of holding down a job: Kiss your boss’s ass, no matter how unfair his/her demands may seem to be.

But of course, leave it to the AFA to leave out the fact that Keezer was only fired, not strictly because of the button, but because he essentially flipped his bosses off for over a year in disobeying them, which merits losing your job no matter who you are or how patriotic you may claim to be. No; from their release, we’re supposed to believe that the evil, anti-Christian Home Depot kicked Keezer out for being a Christian patriot whilst submitting to the whims of those pesky ghey peepol. Despite the fact that the store is a private company and that it can endorse whichever causes it wants, including the LGBT movement if it wishes, and in turn, enforce whichever rules they want. It’s their right as a privately-owned entity. Don’t want to lose your job over a button that violates their dress code? Then don’t get a job there. End of story.

Edit: (02/17/11 1:40 PM) – Fixed some minor details.