Credit where credit is due. CafePress decides to pull vendor produced Psalm 109:8 products after all. Give them some time to work out the kinks. As we saw two days ago, when they initially pulled product, it still appeared in the catalog for a few hours, but you couldn't actually place an order for an item.
Thanks to all of y'all who worked on this. See prior blogs here, here, here and here.
Nov 20th, 2009
Psalm 109:8 update
This morning we made the decision to remove all Psalms 109:8 designs from CafePress.
The public debate started with questioning if the design was simply intended to be criticism of the President or something much worse. The discourse was surprisingly civil online, given the heated nature of the topic. Given that, and the positions of groups like the ACLU and the Anti-Defamation League, we decided to let the dialogue play out publicly before making a final decision.
Last night we posted a poll on our blog, read through the emails we’ve received and weighed the nature of the calls we’ve received on the topic. In the process we also learned that many of the original designers of the Psalm 109:8 designs had already decided to remove them on their own.
General consensus has proven that the design does point to a broader interpretation of the Psalm and thus has been deemed inappropriate for sale at CafePress.
We try to create an atmosphere of self-expression. Many of the things we encounter are not black and white, but grey. When the dialogue is civil, we want to let the larger community work things out rather than making an uninformed ruling. The dialogue has played out and common sentiment has reached agreement – this merchandise is not appropriate.
Thank you all for your input.
My humble thanks for the Recs. I will no longer have to agonize over how to comport myself should this event ever happen. Thanks.