Just hours before the start of the NFL Draft, a Republican lobbyist has put the NFL on notice–any team that takes the plunge and makes Michael Sam the first openly gay player in league history can expect to face a boycott.
Jack Burkman, a Washington lobbyist and a former legal aide to Republican Congressman Rick Lazio, first made headlines shortly after Sam came out as gay in February, when he announced he had drafted federal legislation that would ban openly gay players from playing in any of the four major North American professional leagues. He claimed that the fact Sam was even being considered as an NFL prospect was evidence that the nation was sliding into indecency, and that at least five unnamed congressmen were willing to sponsor this bill. He doubled down on this effort earlier today, when he rushed out with a press release warning that any NFL team who drafts Sam risks being economically destroyed by a “national coalition” of Christian leaders who will ensure that any team who drafts Sam “cannot sell a single ticket, jersey or autographed football.”
Sam came out as gay just after finishing a sterling career at Missouri. In his senior year, he was a consensus first-team All-American, as well as the Southeastern Conference Defensive Player of the Year. But none of that matters to Burkman, who claims that allowing Burkman to play a down would “trample on the Christian community and Christian values.”
At least one prominent religious right leader thinks this would be a bridge too far. Richard Land, the former president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission and the current president of Southern Evangelical Seminary, panned Burkman’s idea in an interview with the Christian Post, saying it was “unwarranted, unjustified and unfair” to ban gay players from playing professionally. When a guy who claimed that the White House was using Trayvon Martin’s murder to “gin up the black vote”–a claim that turned out to not only be horribly bigoted, but plagiarized–thinks something is going too far, that’s saying a lot.
Darrell Lucus is a radical-lefty Jesus-lover who has been blogging for change for a decade. Follow him on Twitter @DarrellLucus or connect with him on Facebook.
