Jesus Dress Up - Response

Response

On March 14, 2004, Jesus Dress Up sparked national controversy when a Philadelphia man, known only as "Gerry", voiced his outrage after seeing the magnets at an Urban Outfitters store in the King of Prussia mall. He wrote a letter of complaint to the chain and brought his story to his local NBC affiliate WCAU-TV when he received their response: Urban Outfitters stated that the magnet was not being sold to offend anyone, but to reflect a diversity of opinion among its customer base.

Urban Outfitters received more than 250,000 complaints, due mostly to organizational efforts from OneMillionMoms.com and OneMillionDads.com, activism group websites created by the American Family Association. Following the controversy on March 17, Urban Outfitters cancelled an order for an additional 3,500 magnet sets and publicly stated that while they would sell their remaining stock they would not order any more.

As a result of this attention, on March 28, 2004, an activism group called Laptop Lobbyists alerted Normal Bob Smith’s web-hosting company, Pick Internet Solutions Inc, and succeeded in shutting down the Jesus Dress Up site. Charles Wheelus, President of Pick Internet Solutions Inc., said in response to the protests, "I am as appalled as you. I find the content of these sites to be obscene and offending." Austin Cline from About.com commented that he hoped Normal Bob Smith would find a new hosting service, "one with a bit more backbone and a bit more respect for the existence of different points of view." JesusDressUp.com was offline for several days until a new web hosting service was found.