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Better To Be Gay Than Christian in the NFL
When University of Missouri defensive lineman Michael Sam was drafted by the St. Louis Rams on Saturday — becoming the first openly gay player in the NFL — he laid a big wet one on his boyfriend in front of the cameras. In response, Miami Dolphins Defensive Back Don Jones tweeted out “OMG” and “Horrible.” The Dolphins were swift in their punishment. Jones has been fined and suspended.
But what about all those nasty tweets leveled against openly Christian Tim Tebow? Oh, that doesn’t matter. Because, you know, Christians deserve it. It takes courage to come out as an openly gay player in a society that is orgasmic about everything gay. But to stand up for your faith in the midst of a culture that is hostile to it, well, that’s just “annoying,” as one tweet said about Tebow.
The hypocrisy isn’t going unnoticed. According to The Blaze, DeMarcus Walker—a sophomore defensive end for Florida State—tweeted:
Later, Walker posted the following cartoon:
He got some backlash:
That last tweet is not exactly right. You can’t legally lose your job for being gay or for being religious, not according to the EEOC. That’s called discrimination (more specifically stereotyping when applied to sexual orientation) and it’s against federal law.
And how about the one that implies there’s something wrong with being Christian. But being gay? There’s nothing wrong with that? Maybe not, but now it’s wrong to be a Christian? Since when? What was it Isaiah said? “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter”? We live in those days (and, yeah, go ahead and crucify me for quoting Scripture).
So now we have it straight: We can tweet all sorts of nastiness about Christians with impunity, but if we tweet anything remotely negative about a gay person, then we will be punished.
The hypocrisy is stunning. But more than that, we have on display—once again—the cultish mindset of an influential portion of American society. The central doctrines of the cult (of which uncritical support of anything related to homosexuality is one) must be upheld, and anyone who criticizes those doctrines—or anyone who does not submit to them—must be demonized. This is why the brainwashed masses don’t care about or even see the hypocrisy. Their “truth” is all that matters.
Victor Davis Hanson recently lamented the hypocrisy of the left in a post at National Review Online and concluded that if you say the “right things” it doesn’t matter how much of a hypocrite you are. Al Gore can live lavishly, leaving behind a massive carbon footprint wherever he goes, and it doesn’t matter. The NAACP can honor people like Donald Sterling as long as they get a big check. And now, the NFL can punish anyone who criticizes a gay player while turning a blind eye to those who malign Christians.
Hanson believes liberalism will fall under the weight of its own hypocrisy. That would be true if people cared about truth. But they don’t. They care only about the cult doctrines. The hypocrisy of the cult leaders or even the hypocrisy of the group doesn’t matter. All that matters is the “truth” they have created. Hold to the truth as defined by those in power and you won’t be punished—in fact, you’ll be celebrated. Don’t submit to the teaching of the cult, and you will be excoriated. Just ask Brendan Eich. Now ask Don Jones.
Published in General
People should really divorce themselves from seeking approval from society writ large, especially on the internet/twitter. Society isn’t going to change by putting yourself out there as a martyr. Build your bubble; enjoy your life.
Great post as usual DC. Those tweets were ridiculous. First of all Tim Tebow was a great college quarterback but not a great NFL quarterback, but nobody knew that until he started playing at the professional level. Same with Sam, we do not know how this guy will perform at the professional level so all those tweets about how they mocked Tebow for being a bad football player (which really isn’t true) is garbage because when he was first drafted he had much more promise than Michael Sam who was lucky to be a 7th draft pick. Although he thinks it was discrimination as to why he wasn’t higher.
It’s becoming a madness almost the reactions that have been happening to openly religious people. Look at the Benham brothers who’s TV show was cancelled due to their Christian faith. Brendan Eich, Florists, wedding photographers, bakers… its madness. I understand the activist gay left is driving this facism but what about the regular gay folks that just want to live their lives. They are not at war with their religious relatives that may not accept their lifestyles but still love them and treat them wonderfully.
Until we start using the systems that exist, and play the game, we will continue to lose the game.
The most powerful words we can put into our common vocabulary is bigot, and hate-speech.
On nearly every site there is a little flag in the corner. Learn to embrace it.
Our talking heads on the TV need to tell bigots that they are bigots to their face, until it becomes mainstream. Remember every company in america has an EO policy and religion is protected every single bit as much as race, gender, and sexual orientation.
This is the game.
Make Greg Lukianoff cry. Bless his heart.
The only thing that beats a scorched earth campaign is a russian winter.
In the words of national review: ” This way madness lies,” we need to go the full Kurtz and embrace the madness.
I say all this as a person who is more on the lefts side on gay issues than I am on the right. I just can’t abide the klan-like hate on the left.
It all makes me very unhappy, but I have lost most of my belief in the existence of good faith.
I’d say the really courageous one is DeMarcus Walker. I’m going to say some prayers for him.
Excellent post. No group of people is quite so morally preening as the Sports Media. They all want to be covering Jackie Robinson breaking into MLB, just like political journalists want to be covering Watergate. The problem is that in order to be the brave soul supporting Jackie Robinson for a southern newspaper, you have to go counter-cultural. The counter-cultural story, the story that requires courage from a journalist, is the story about how difficult it is for a Christian sports-figure to publicly live his faith.
Oh, he’s welcome to quiet piety. But he may not call sin, sin. Indeed, the Christian athlete is held to a higher standard than almost any public figure, because he’s not allowed to imperfectly live out his religion. He must do so perfectly, and yet quietly (and those may not always be compatable, by the way).
But that’s okay. If the world loved Christians, we might have to start wondering whether we were living correctly.
Jones violated the new orthodoxy which cannot be tolerated by those who spend all their time proclaiming how tolerant they are.
“Horrible” is unacceptable hate speach now?
We are at the point where tolerance is now considered a hate crime. You cannot simply tolerate someone you disagree with. Either you embrace and encourage homosexuality or you get fined and sent to a re-education camp (OK, maybe it is not a camp but Jones must “undergo educational training” before he can play again).
DeMarcus Walker is my new favorite college football player.
Guruforhire, I have to disagree with you. Somehow I don’t think that children yelling “No, you hate me more!” is going to solve anything. I think we have to retain our beliefs and quietly go about our lives. We don’t hide what we believe and we defend religious freedom, but we love everyone. We turn the other cheek. In other words, we behave like true Christians. We continue to get married to people of the opposite sex, have children and build strong families. It probably means that there are certain jobs we cannot do. We will have to start our own schools or home school our children. We might want to avoid certain states, like California, Massachusetts and Illinois. We’ll lose some of the weaker among us, but we’ll gain other adherents who see that sexual and family chaos are the result of the current regime. It’s going to be ugly, but it would be uglier if we became the thing we are fighting against.
In the end, love and conviction are stronger than hate.
I guess this means that Socons are not going to hire you as our consultant!!! ;-)
I never paid much attention to the Tebow media circus, but I’m curious if there are examples of NFL players saying derogatory things about Tebow’s faith, and going unpunished. That seems to be the most useful comparison here.
What he should do is claim that he said ‘OMG’ as an exclamation of joy and support and “horrible” as how they are kissing, i.e. not passionate enough. Make them prove his motives and what he actually meant. Words are funny things.
That has never been true at any point in the history of the world.
The only thing that has ever worked (as a low violence strategy), is to shatter the ability of people to think of themselves as good.
His own team members (Jets) criticized him to the NY Post and others have mocked him on the field with his prayer stance. Then there are several instances of sports media criticizing his faith.
Also Brady Quinn criticized “quarterback Jesus” and questioned whether his expressions of faith were genuine. He later apologized. Kurt Warner also told him to tone down his faith
I don’t believe we need to withdraw. If centurions could be Christians, we can figure out how to live within this state and culture. We can’t, however, expect to be loved by them.
Tebow has also been counseled by other Christian athletes — most prominently and publicly by Kurt Warner — to tone it down.
If this was meant as a response to me G, I need to remind you that Jesus was killed violently by those who hated him, but what happened to his movement? Sometimes people have not been true to Christian principles and done violence in his name, yes, but that is not true Christian behavior. No, the power of Christianity is in peace, goodwill and love. If you tell people they are hateful, they won’t believe you. They will generally think they are justified in their hatred. You have to love them and behave decently to them help them come to this realization on their own.
I just wrote a post about (ok, well, sort of) this picture that I took yesterday. Notice the top right corner… Regardless of his ability to play football (he might be fantastic, he might be terrible), he will be the #1 sports story for a while in my neck of the woods.
Damnit! Can someone please tell me why EVERY picture I upload onto this site shows up sideways?!
Hypocrisy is a Christian moral not a pagan one. If you are a sports writer is is only wrong for Christians to be hypocrites for everyone else, it is all right unless you don’t like what they are doing. Then you can call them a hypocrite to show how rationally and morally superior you are verse their irrational and immoral behavior. So the concept of a hypocrisy is a weapon to be used not a moral concept to live by unless you follow Jesus.
There is quite a bit of hypocrisy and rationalization going on. I will note that the Dolphins have had some rather troubling problems over the past few years involving how some veteran players have treated rookies. The backlash against Jones is probably related to that as well.
Side note: For some time I’ve pondered just whether social Progressives understand the meaning of “Courage”. For them, Courage apparently means saying things to a group of people who will applaud you with a standing ovation and heckle any one who might contradict.
Side side note: I’ve noted my Progressive friends on facebook who could give a flying flop about football are suddenly posting like crazy about Sam. Whether Sam is any good or not, people who hate football are talking about football. The NFL is probably eating this publicity up like a pepperoni pizza with extra pepperoni, extra cheese, and a side of buffalo wings.
After Kurt Warner led his team to victory in the Super Bowl he grabbed a microphone and shouted, “Thank you, Jesus!” So, I don’t think his comments were critical of Tebow’s faith. Warner felt, right or wrong, that Tebow could have more of an impact with non-believers by being less “in-your-face” with his Christianity.
Now, what if a well meaning homosexual or sympathizer told Sam to tone down his public displays of affection. Would the league view that the way they did Warner’s comments, or would they call it “hate” and suggest that the person who said that is trying to push Sam “back into the closet”?
Thank you Mark. There is a false equivalence here that is undeniable regardless of how one feels about the topic at hand.
Nope. Like I said in my comment Brady Quinn should have been punished by these standards. So too players who mocked Tebow on the field.
Frankly, Michael Sam should have been quietly reprimanded for the unnecessary “show.” Football is very much a team sport and one played by men with high levels of testosterone and fairly traditional views on sexuality. Flaunting one’s homosexuality is obviously no crime, but isn’t exactly
productive for team cohesiveness. Before he became a liberal, Colin Powell very much defended the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” military policy because he believed that one’s sexuality (unlike race) truly defines a person’s identity.
For Pete’s sake, players are fined for dancing in the end zone. Why shouldn’t others show a little more sensitivity to the “image” of their profession?
Matthew, I think that comment requires some elaboration. You may be right… you may not. Either way, all I see above is an assertion. I think the comparisons seem apt; you disagree, care to explain why?
Neither Don Jones nor DeMarcus Walker said anything wrong. And to that guy named ODDIST who replied to Walker by saying he’s on “the wrong side of history”: history has no “side”, you bloody fool.
Well, that’s an interesting question. And perhaps a similar one to the one that is asked about Muslims all the time. If there is, indeed, a large contingent of gay folks who would just like to live their lives in peace without turning everything into a political football (in this case, literally, as Joe Biden would say), then perhaps they do need to speak up and say so.
Just as it would be really helpful if the ‘vast majority’ of Muslims, who we are told are peace-loving family types, would stand up and be counted. (I’ve seen a few, lately. That’s a hopeful sign. But not a big one).
Otherwise, the ‘minority’ of activists (or worse) will win the day, every day. All everyone else has to do is stay silent.
Maybe they’ll allow kissing in the end zone now.
Not funny! :)
So, when all is said and done, how will his teammates feel about showering with Mr. Sam? There are some feelings that are very difficult to repress or disguise.
In the end, we have the fullest realization of the Progressive social activists’ ideal. It’s not enough that we tolerate, accept, and even overall approve and endorse homosexuality and similar sexual differences, but we must be forced to do all of the above or be cast out of civilized society. Christianity will never be tolerated by these Progressives, as the Progressives cannot tolerate any idea or belief that is different than their own. They laud a diversity that is shallow at best, and strike out against any diversity of thought or belief.
Those of us who saw where this was going and how we’d soon get to this point were dismissed summarily, and now we’re being proven right we’re shouted down in anger for daring to be against the new Progressive Social Vision.
For the record, being Cassandra stinks.