Liberty Counsel attorney Matt Barber’s new website, BarbWire, today ran an article, “Michael Sam, Jason Collins & The Gayification Of Professional Sports,” which warned that by accepting openly gay athletes like Sam and Collins, professional sports leagues are “becoming just another venue for breeding and promoting selfish, shallow professionals.”
BarbWire contributor Tom O’Toole was especially upset by Sam’s announcement, lamenting that “we see the rare heroism of a born leader being frittered away, a young man being deceived by everyone from the president on down into believing his sin is his glory, his shame is his fame.”
In the rough and tumble world of professional (and big-time college) sports, where until recently it was at least okay to be wary of gay teammates in the locker room, we now find that all bets of rational natural decency are off. First, when former University of Missouri football star, Michael Sam, declared himself “gay and proud of it,” we found both politicians and athletes alike falling over themselves to sing his praises first. Then, after 35-year-old NBA journeyman Jason Collins (who previously received MSM hero worship last season when he was released from the Celtics and came out of the closet), actually got a gig with the New Jersey Nets recently, he received standing ovations in arenas around the league, surely the most acclaimed 10-day contract player ever in the history of the NBA. But while these men may indeed be heroes (even to devout Catholics!), it’s up to Christians everywhere to point out to the young and impressionable, that they are being worshiped for the wrong reasons.
Getting back to my first point, with the secular deification of Collins and Sam, it seems that not only will a male Christian athlete get vilified as a homophobic if he objects to homosexuality in principal, he no longer can even question the place of a nude gay man in the largely straight guy shower. Since both Collins and Sam admit to being attracted to men, you would think it common sense that a straight man wouldn’t want to show off the parts that gays are particularly attracted to, especially in close quarters. Does this also mean that if a college man is allowed to play on a women’s sports team since that sport is not offered to men–also once thought wacky, but recent court decisions don’t agree–that women are supposed to be accepting of his naked presence in the shower/locker room while they are also undressing? Fortunately, most female athletes I talked to still are freaked out over this potential invasion of modesty, but there’s something fishy when the natural attraction to the opposite sex can be objected to in the locker room, but the unnatural attraction to the same sex cannot.
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For Sam to overcome his parents’ separation, to watch one older brother die from a gunshot wound, see two other brothers go to prison and another disappear, never to be found…is a lot to expect any kid to endure and not lose hope. Now add to this his sister dying in infancy, plus being homeless and living out of his mother’s car, and Sam still being mentally tough enough to become not only the only kid in his family to attend college, but earn All-American honors in football, and that’s about as heroic as it gets. Ironically, it is the one thing for which society praises him most–that is, being an active open homosexual–that is about the only thing for which he is not a hero. And that statement is not according to me or Fox TV, but to God and His Only begotten Son.
That is why Michael’s descent is so tragic, for we see the rare heroism of a born leader being frittered away, a young man being deceived by everyone from the president on down into believing his sin is his glory, his shame is his fame. In the meantime, sports, once one of the greatest avenues for both molding and inspiring selfless young heroes, is now becoming just another venue for breeding and promoting selfish, shallow professionals. And that, my friends, is nothing to cheer about.
