SEB Public Service Announcement of the Day: If you’re going to see The Passion of the Christ don’t dress up as the Devil to see how the Christians will react. They won’t react well despite all that ‘love and mercy’ crap they’re always claiming their religion is all about.
“I always like to push the limits,” Wendell said. Many were upset that Wendell chose to wear a devil costume to a religious movie. Many patrons jeered Wendell as he stood in line for concessions.
Once inside the movie, Christians began pelting Wendell with Gummy Bears, Ju-Ju Bees, and popcorn. Management got involved after a 75-year-old woman, Hazel Meyer, poured a 64-ounce Coca-Cola on Wendell.
Tim Tolbert, General Manager of Kerasotes Stadium 16, asked Wendell to leave because he was such a disruptive presence. “Our corporate policy is to eject anyone that interferes with the movie experience of fellow patrons,” Tolbert said.
Ingrid Holzappel, a member of Corpus Christi Catholic Church, was outraged. “This is no place for this type of behavior,” Holzappel remarked, “This was already a sensitive subject, and then to mock it by dressing up as Satan is despicable.”
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Wendell, an atheist, said, “If God really existed, He would have struck me down for dressing as the devil.” He also wanted to prove “that Christians aren’t as forgiving as they portray”. Wendell says his actions were also partially due to a genuine dislike of Mel Gibson.Tolbert replied that Wendell was “a misguided and deranged person.” Tolbert also said measures are being taken to ensure this type of disruption does not occur again. “From now on, people dressed offensively will not be allowed to enter the theatre.” Kerasotes’ management is in the process of creating new guidelines for preventing people dressed as “evil beings” from gaining entrance to the theatre.
Well, I suppose geeks will no longer be able to show up to viewings of Star Wars dressed as Darth Vader or a Storm Trooper then, eh? On the plus side, at least no one offered to pray for him.
There’s a part of me that finds this highly amusing and a part of me that thinks he should just leave these poor people alone to their delusions. It doesn’t take such a silly stunt to show how intolerant a lot of Christians can be. Just pick a newspaper.
Update: Thanks to alert reader Aaron it now appears this is a work of satire by a couple of guys who are probably having a pretty good laugh over it right now. It’s a well done piece and certainly did a good job of stirring things up, especially around here. 
Posted on 03/01/2004 at 06:53 PM 
Posted on 03/01/2004 at 09:11 PM 
Posted on 03/02/2004 at 12:37 AM 
This story is amusing and very sad. The part that bothers me though is not so much the intolerance of the christian patrons but that the movie theater will now decide who is dressed offensively.
How will they determine what is offensive and what is not? Will it simply be costumes they don’t allow or will be it shirts with writing on it? Buttons attached to shirts? I mean, how will they set a criteria as to what is offensive and what is not? Maybe it’s just devil costumes.
Maybe we could get away with those shirts that say we survived the passion and all we got was a lousy t shirt.