(OPINION) ETH – Kurt Beathard — the former-offensive coordinator for the Illinois State University football team found out the hard way the backlash that comes with including Jesus Christ in his opinions. This comes as a Black Lives Matter sign was found taped to his office door back in August.
Beathard decided to immediately remove the sign because he believed that the organization had an affinity for Marxism and a dim view of the nuclear family. The coach stated: “‘I thought, ‘No, I can’t have this on my door,'” he told King. “So I took it off and put it behind the chair in my office. I was praying about it and I thought, ‘All lives matter here, and there’s no other organization other than Jesus Christ to sponsor that.'”
Later that day Beathard replaced the sign with a new sign on his office door with a new message: “All Lives Matter to Our Lord & Savior Jesus Christ,” Outkick said the new sign remained on his office door for nearly two weeks before any backlash came from one of his superiors. “They didn’t demand it,” Beathard recalled to the outlet. “They just said, ‘As a favor, could you please take that off your door?’ I didn’t take it off right away.
I sat there and prayed about it, and I said, ‘God knows where my heart is. That’s all that matters. If it will help to take it off, I’ll take it off.'” But then it was already too late. According to TheBlaze, “Beathard told Outkick that a few days before he was asked to remove his sign, a photo of it had been taken and circulated among players — and some of them were offended.
And on Sept. 2, the school told Beathard he was no longer on the coaching staff, the outlet said, adding that ISU reassigned him.” It was shortly after this that a number of news outlets began reporting that Beathard resigned from his position, including the student paper the Vidette. But he told Outkick that was not the case: “I never quit.
I did not quit that job.” When questioned, School officials told the Pantagraph they would not discuss what led to Beathard’s departure. Three sources close to the football program reportedly told the Pantagraph that a Black Lives Matter poster had been taken removed in the team’s locker room,
but Beathard said he was not involved in removing posters in the locker room. “That locker room crap is wrong,” he told the Pantagraph. “I took the sign down somebody put on my door. That’s it. I didn’t take anything off that wasn’t put on my door. I wrote the message.”
