Posted on 10/31/2009 6:02:52 AM PDT by Zakeet
Athletes have heard the ugly words on practice fields for most of their lives. They hear them in the streets and at neighborhood hangouts.
But when Chiefs running back Larry Johnson used an antigay slur on his Twitter account and in the locker room this week, he struck a nerve that makes professional sports leagues wince.
The NFL, like other pro sports leagues, is perceived as homophobic. Of the more than 20,000 athletes who have played in the NFL, less than a handful have identified themselves as gay — David Kopay was the first in 1975, followed by Roy Simmons and Esera Tuaolo — and only after their careers had ended.
Now the image-conscious NFL — which fines players for wearing droopy socks or the wrong-colored chin straps, is frightened by the prospect of Rush Limbaugh as an owner and enforces a rigid personal conduct policy — is confronted with how to deal with gay-bashing.
“It seems like every single season I’m getting phone calls about some athlete saying a gay slur, and using the word ‘gay’ and ‘faggot’ and ‘homo’ and ‘queer’ in such a negative term,” Tuaolo said in a phone interview with The Star from his home in suburban Minneapolis.
“There are gay athletes in the NFL and in baseball and in the NHL … it’s so crippling to someone who is going to work knowing there is no support in their organization. What is also crippling to an athlete is hearing slurs like that thrown around like it’s just the thing to do. When you use the term ‘gay’ or ‘faggot’ or ‘queer’ and you use it in a negative term, it’s the same as calling a woman a ‘bitch.’ It’s demeaning to another human being. And it’s not right.”
(Excerpt) Read more at kansascity.com ...
The liberals cannot talk about evolution and homosexuals in the same conversation and get noticably agitated when you tell them "evolution is only possible with HETEROSEXUAL relationships."
It depends on the issue. The country has become far more pro-life over the past decade. Economically and on national security issues, it as as conservative as it was 20 years ago.
We can blame conservatives for going along with idiotic cliche that whatever consenting adults do is fine and dandy. Conservative opinion makers have given up on the issue and the issue of preserving marriage and the nuclear family.
And, pink gloves. Oh wait, they already are.
Ironic given that 75% of the league is black while homosexuals keep trying to equate their deviancy to racial discrimination.
And Shaquille O'Neal...
Would you say that to his face?
Or the "wide receiver."
The mantle of victim usually, historically has fallen about the shoulders of those who have been seen to wear it or carry its burden as you see it; with this newest victim class, the mantle can be kept conveniently in reserve and donned at a moments notice just as its counterpart, the humble umbrella, is commonly carried in tropical climes as one strolls about, taking the sun.
If one goes about on cloudy days, pointed end thrust forward and poking every goblin in sight, then the shield is lost in the heat of challenge.
What nonsense this non-gender role must eventually be seen.
These guys are supposed to go out on the field and knock the opposition down hard enough to get them to exude bodily fluids out of their nostrils at a minimum, and they are worried about getting their feelings hurt?
Sheesh!
Take the contract money and go open an interior decorating business already...
See what happens if you let some guy pat you on the butt on national TV?
Chad’s not gay. He has four kids with three different women.
don’t we have the right to think sodomy is disgusting??? Don’t we have the right to ridicule and demean this behavior?
Doesn’t mean we hate the people who engage in the behavior...I think old fat people having sex is disgusting but it doesn’t mean i hate old fat people...
We stood still while the whole spectrum slid wa-a-a-ay to the left. Now they call mainstream, middle America the far-right lunatic fringe."
That's always been the case. One of the single most misunderstood sociological trends in constitutional republics or democracies is the idea that "people grow more conservative as they get older." In fact, what happens is they remain the same as the culture around them grows more liberal.
To illustrate: The newly formed Republican party that advocated for freeing the slaves was a radical left-wing group in its day, especially in the eyes of the more conservative southerners. Two or three generations later, most people accepted that slavery ended but were loath to accept the women suffrage movement; they couldn't, in good conscious, support a woman's right to vote. This same person, a radical liberal in their twenties, was now considered a staunch conservative in old age.
I always shake my head when I hear someone say that culturally we are a "center right" country because anyone who has spent any time in the population centers of the United States, such as New York or Los Angeles, or in areas that have a higher-than-average under 30 population knows that is not the case. I was in Ohio on business in a major university town and stopped by a high-end department store to buy some clothes. My best friend commented that in the past hour, he had seen three or four gay couples with their arm around each other, shopping like regular straight couples. No one reacted because, frankly, my generation doesn't care anymore than we would to see an interracial couple.
Many of my extended family members that still lives in small, rural farming communities (the type where the old men gather around at the feed store and spend all day talking about the weather), didn't see it coming because all of us, on one level or another, assume that everyone is like our neighbors or friends. We can't even perceive that our opinions are in the minority and that society is changing around us.
The only counter-trend is that the under 30 crowd is more pro-life than any other group, which seems odd when you consider that religious instruction has declined substantially over the past 50 years. Still, I'm grateful for that.
The point of all of this is to say, it's a fools paradise to think that people will grow more conservative in an absolute sense as they get older. The best way to convince people to support conservative causes is to demonstrate, clearly and directly, the danger they face in their everyday life if the government has control over their private decisions. As Benjamin Franklin put it, the man who wins the argument is not he who appeals to right or wrong, but to a man's interest. If we can convince people that more government means less money in their paycheck, or less freedom of choice in education, we have a much better chance of emptying out Congress and starting over with a new crop of legislators.
Yes, it’s true that society has been getting more liberalized over the years. That indeed has been going on sonce the late nineteenth century.
And you last point is well-taken - that appealing to people’s interests will get us much farther than appealing with concepts.
No one in NASCAR wants to get rear-ended?
It’s sickening to think about a man checking out other men. Imagine being in the showers with a queer?
Great - now it’s almost time to go to sleep and I have to have this on my mind...
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