A couple of decades ago a Japanese teacher got into a great deal of trouble in a history class for asking his students to do this “step on Christ” exercise as a learning lesson. The largely secular and definitely non-Christian authorities in Japan understood what was wrong with that and my recollection is they did the right thing to stop it from happening again. PING to americanintokyo — do you remember the details on that case?
Something is very seriously wrong if Japan did the right thing but a state university in Florida lets the professor get away with this.
I am neither a Roman Catholic nor a Mormon, and my Calvinist theology not only teaches me to oppose images of Christ but actually to destroy them as idols. If Yale or Harvard or some other private school wants to do something like this, that's up to them. But there is no way in the world I am going to say that a professor at a public university in the United States has the right to force students to step on words, images, or anything else representing Jesus Christ.
We have the First Amendment for a reason.
Oh yeh, just try offending the Gay Lobby, or Cair, or any of the other dozen or so lobbies, then come back here and tell us all about free speech.