During a Friday pride night game, several San Francisco Giants pitchers wrote Bible verses on their gay-ified hats. One player made clear there was “no hate at all. It’s just what I stand for, and what I stand on: I believe in God.” The same player added that the rainbow is a symbol of God’s covenant and promise and that he’s ultimately thankful to live in a country where free expression and speech are protected.
But apparently writing a Bible verse on his baseball cap will actually cause gay people to be abused and even incite gays to kill themselves — so says The New York Times’ subsidiary, The Athletic.
Grant Brisbee said the Bible verse inscriptions on the hat were “tone-deaf” and “made the night about ‘us versus them.'”
Brisbee then made the fantastical claim that, apparently, writing a Bible verse on your ball cap will cause gay people to suffer actual harm.
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“Without the support of their community at large, LGBTQIA+ individuals are much more likely to be told that they are without value,” Brisbee wrote. “They are likelier to be abused, to self-harm, to get kicked out of their homes, to be bullied, to be assaulted. They are at risk because of a society that still doesn’t always accept them, even after decades of progress.”
There is legitimately zero evidence that baseball players writing Bible inscriptions on their hats will cause any harm, abuse, or the assault of gay persons (or anyone for that matter).
What Brisbee is arguing is that if a player expresses religious beliefs that diverge from the left-wing LGBTQ orthodoxy, then real people could be harmed. At that point the argument is that Christianity causes violence and therefore Christianity is bad unless of course you practice your faith in a way that Brisbee deems fit (he waxes poetic about how the right type of Christianity apparently demands affirming the sexual preferences of others). His argument also becomes: if fans don’t enthusiastically celebrate pride night, they’re contributing to suffering. If someone doesn’t affirm the mental illness of a man thinking he’s a woman, they’re creating a dangerous environment.
Each personal disagreement is framed as violence itself in Brisbee’s mind.
Still, Brisbee peddled the emotional blackmail, further claiming that “Events like Pride Night reduce suffering in a very real way. To suggest they don’t is to ignore the humanity of the individuals involved.”
To be clear — there is no measurable or quantifiable way to know that a gay-themed baseball game “reduce[s] suffering in a very real way.” Is the suffering reduced at first pitch? How many lives are saved by a single rainbow logo on a helmet? Brisbee is simply asserting these ridiculous claims and demanding we accept them as truth (otherwise we’re just as inhumane as the pitchers themselves).
But this is the entire logic behind Pride Month. Tolerance or voluntary support was never enough. Everyone must participate, affirm, celebrate and validate gays, transgenders, and whatever else the alphabet-group says they are. Anyone who peacefully and subtly refuses to do so is accused of causing harm.
But a Bible verse is not violence. Neither is a Christian player writing one on his cap. And if you think either of those things are, maybe the problem isn’t the Bible or the players.
