Full content for this article includes photograph and illustration.
Source: Time, July 3, 1989 v134 n1 p23(1).


Title: Antiwar or antichrist? (Pasadena, Texas school officials may ban the peace symbol, seen as satanic)

Subjects: Pasadena, Texas - Schools
Peace - Trademarks, insignia, etc.
School boards - Attitudes
Locations: Texas

Magazine Collection: 50F0632
Business Collection: 45V1988
Electronic Collection: A7381576
RN: A7381576

Full Text COPYRIGHT Time Inc. 1989

When antiwar activists look at an inverted Y inside a circle, they see a symbol for peace. But some school officials in Pasadena, Texas, detect something satanic: an upside-down broken cross that signifies the defeat of Christianity. This week they will vote on a new student dress code that would allow principals to outlaw the sign.

School administrators learned the symbol's devilish significance at a seminar on cults conducted last spring at the University of Houston. (The peace sign was devised by British pacifists who combined the semaphore signs for N and D, standing for nuclear disarmament.) The proposed ban has drawn some wry comments from students. Quipped a twelve-year-old: "If they ban peace symbols, they'll have to ban basic geometry because of all its lines and circles."

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