131 replies to this topic

[SeoulSoxFan]

Brendon Ayanbadejo says yes to marriage equality, the first NFL player to do so that I can recall:

Edited by SeoulSoxFan, 14 January 2013 - 06:34 AM.

[WayBackVazquez]

Brendon Ayanbadejo says yes to marriage equality, the first NFL player to do so that I can recall:

He may have been the first, but it was about two years ago.

[loshjott]

It's news now because Maryland is on the verge of approving same sex marriage. The state Senate passed the bill and the House of Delegates is voting tomorrow. Gov. O'Malley said he'll sign it if it passes. Some undecided socially conservative African-American Democrats are the swing bloc at this point, so Ayanbadejo's support could have some weight.

[tim mccarver]

It's news now because Maryland is on the verge of approving same sex marriage. The state Senate passed the bill and the House of Delegates is voting tomorrow. Gov. O'Malley said he'll sign it if it passes. Some undecided socially conservative African-American Democrats are the swing bloc at this point, so Ayanbadejo's support could have some weight.

and there is the strange case of Sam Arora

http://www.tbd.com/b...-into-9159.html

He ran strongly on this issue and went out of his way to court donations based on his support of marriage equality. Very strange flip-flop and pretty disheartening.

[RGREELEY33]

Your 2nd favorite NFL player, Chris Kluwe.

http://www.nfl.com/n..._headline_stack

[Reverend]

Your 2nd favorite NFL player, Chris Kluwe.

http://www.nfl.com/n..._headline_stack

I think it's important to tell people that they should click on the link to the letter he sent to Mr. Burns.

[Smiling Joe Hesketh]

These guys are awesome. Well done.

[drleather2001]

Kluwe is pretty cool. I heard him doing a guest DJ spot on the local college radio station, and he played some Beck and then talked fairly intelligently about why he liked the song.

Seems like a fairly thoughtful guy.

[bankshot1]

story covered in today's NYTimes

http://www.nytimes.c...=1&ref=football

" Baltimore Ravens linebacker Brendon Ayanbadejo has been a consistent supporter of legalizing same-sex marriage. In 2011, he filmed his own video backing this November’s ballot initiative in Maryland and posted it on YouTube, and he recently donated Ravens tickets to a Marylanders for Marriage Equality fund-raiser.
Ayanbadejo’s acts caught the attention of Emmett C. Burns Jr., a Maryland state delegate who opposes same-sex marriage. On Aug. 29, Burns sent a letter to Steve Bisciotti, the Ravens’ owner, urging him to “inhibit such expressions from your employee and that he be ordered to cease and desist such injurious actions.” ..."

[Blacken]

Kluwe is pretty cool. I heard him doing a guest DJ spot on the local college radio station, and he played some Beck and then talked fairly intelligently about why he liked the song.

Seems like a fairly thoughtful guy.

He's one of the few really interesting athlete Twitter follows. Comes off as a complete geek.

Goddamn punters.

[JohnnyK]

He's one of the few really interesting athlete Twitter follows. Comes off as a complete geek.

He's also regularly on reddit to talk football or about his articles.

[JohnnyK]

Kluwe again, but on a lighter subject:
http://www.minneapol...ris-kluwe-style

[Soxy Brown]

Kluwe strikes again. This time in response to an editorial in the Minneapolis Star Tribune decrying gay marriage.

Dude seems pretty awesome.

[MakMan44]

http://deadspin.com/...ter-chris-kluwe

This is old but if your posting about Kluwe, I thought this was pretty hilarious when I read it

[nothumb]

everything he writes is about 3 times as long as it needs to be and has that "i'm an 8th grader who just discovered snark" tone to it. if this guy was just some yambag in your office you'd hide all this shit from your facebook feed.

obviously i am glad professional athletes are coming out on the right side of this issue, and kudos for that, but i honestly can't get through any of his "articles"

[The Best Catch in 100 Years]

Yeah the internet-speak is really wearing.

[Reverend]

For anyone interested, Ayanbadejo and Kluwe were on NPR on September 12th. They are smart, thoughtful and articulate as all hell--which is sort of a nightmare for their opposition.

You get a real sense of just how much Kluwe is using shtick to get his message out--on this issues and others. I can see how it could get tiresome and I don't read him regularly, but he's translating the message into juvenile meathead-speak and it's been pretty effective.

Have a listen.

[wibi]

everything he writes is about 3 times as long as it needs to be and has that "i'm an 8th grader who just discovered snark" tone to it. if this guy was just some yambag in your office you'd hide all this shit from your facebook feed.

obviously i am glad professional athletes are coming out on the right side of this issue, and kudos for that, but i honestly can't get through any of his "articles"

You couldnt be more wrong if you tried. If you've ever read some of his other stuff you can see that he writes this way intentionally to get his point across. The fact that we are discussing it and that its making waves across my FB feed tells me he just dropped a punt inside the five yard line with his articles. Kluwe is using his (fleeting) popularity as a professional athlete to tell idiots why they are wrong.

[drleather2001]

He's a professional football player.

The fact that he can write coherently at all, nevermind be ocassionally amusing and sometimes thoughtful, is notable.

The fact that he chooses to bother at all is remarkable.

This isn't Peter King or Bill Simmons we're talking about here.

[Turrable]

Undeniably the best Kluwe related thing on the internet is this comment from one of his Deadspin stories:

I clicked the send button on my message to Inaction Jackson and was about to return to the final chapter of my copy of "P" Is for Punter when a head full of blonde hair suddenly illuminated my dark corner of the locker room. She had legs longer than a goal post and a short skirt that ended just before her end zone. She was pretty like a perfect Peyton Manning pass, a smooth, tight thing of beauty with lips redder than a challenge flag. But when I looked into her eyes, my brain blew the whistle. Those pale blue orbs had the kind of iciness you only see at a playoff game in Green Bay, a hard stare that said she'd seen her share of unnecessary roughness.

"Can I help you, doll?" I asked.

"I hear you're a man who knows how to blend into the background, not be noticed by other players," she said. Her words were nicer but her tone was Coughlin tough.

"Some would say that," I replied. "I like to think of myself more as a man who provides a very valuable, specialized service for a modest fee."

"And I hear you don't like quarterbacks."

"Depends on the quarterback."

She flashed me a picture of a very famous pigskin hurler who likes to spread the ball around to lots of receivers in his private life even more than on the field. I definitely didn't like this signal caller, and in fact, under the right conditions, I'd probably call him a name reserved for feminine hygiene products.

"I think he's cheating on me," she said, "With some South American floozie. I need proof."

"What can you pay?" I asked.

"48 percent of what I'll take him for when I get it," she replied. She added a smile wider and whiter than the Indianapolis Colts offensive line, with enough warmth to melt a little of the frozen tundra in her eyes. "And maybe a little something extra if you're good." My little referee spun his arm wildly. Play was about to resume.

I closed my novel. The ending would have to wait. I had a mystery of my own. "Meet me out back in twenty minutes," I said. "I have to go practice first."

http://deadspin.com/...ck-it-yes-i-can

[nothumb]

You couldnt be more wrong if you tried. If you've ever read some of his other stuff you can see that he writes this way intentionally to get his point across.

i don't care if he's doing it intentionally or not, it's unreadable. in fact if he is capable of making his point humorously and coherently without the smattering of D-list scatalogical neologisms (what in the actual fuck is a dickzombie?) that makes it worse, not better.

there are a lot of people making waves on my facebook feed about gay rights, too. like my friends participating in the campaign for southern equality, getting harassed and arrested, putting themselves at risk in an extremely hostile environment. but if you run in the kind of circles where dick zombies are more compelling, kudos to you i guess?

Edited by nothumb, 29 September 2012 - 07:43 PM.

[Blacken]

Old or aspie? I can't tell which.

[Reverend]

i don't care if he's doing it intentionally or not, it's unreadable. in fact if he is capable of making his point humorously and coherently without the smattering of D-list scatalogical neologisms (what in the actual fuck is a dickzombie?) that makes it worse, not better.

there are a lot of people making waves on my facebook feed about gay rights, too. like my friends participating in the campaign for southern equality, getting harassed and arrested, putting themselves at risk in an extremely hostile environment. but if you run in the kind of circles where dick zombies are more compelling, kudos to you i guess?

Some would argue that it's better for their to be a multiplicity of voices capable of speaking to different sorts of audiences.

To suggest that we ought to engage in some forms of communication and not others is a failure to apprehend democracy.

Don't enjoy him? Don't read him. But don't let it prevent you from seeing that the man is doing God's work here.

Edited by Reverend, 29 September 2012 - 07:56 PM.

[nothumb]

i mean, i'm not interested in further derailing, because we are on the same side. and at the end of the day, yes, of course he can say whatever he wants however he wants. i never said otherwise. all i said is that i find his style quite off-putting.

to you, that's a "failure to apprehend democracy" (lol, who's on their high horse again?)

[Soxy Brown]

Yeah, I hate capital letters too.

[URI]

Old or aspie? I can't tell which.

I'm guessing an unholy combination of both. Smoking jacket included.

[bbc23]

Matt Birk wrote an anti-gay article that Kluwe addressed on twitter and he has already said he will post a response after their game

[Blacken]

Nobody with that hair should be saying one fucking word about gay people.

Edited by Blacken, 30 September 2012 - 12:26 AM.

[crystalline]

The Birk article is measured and sounds earnest:
http://www.startribu.../171850721.html

But his basic point is that gay marriage is bad for children because single parents are bad for children. Somewhere in the middle he implicitly equates single parents with gay partners raising kids.
???

It is pretty amazing that this discussion - now with several players involved- has broken into the NFL ranks.

[soxfan121]

Kluwe strikes again. This time in response to an editorial in the Minneapolis Star Tribune decrying gay marriage.

Dude seems pretty awesome.

Kluwe stole most of that from a Myt1 post in V&N.

[Lose Remerswaal]

Birk went to Harvard. They must be proud.

[Reverend]

i mean, i'm not interested in further derailing, because we are on the same side. and at the end of the day, yes, of course he can say whatever he wants however he wants. i never said otherwise. all i said is that i find his style quite off-putting.

to you, that's a "failure to apprehend democracy" (lol, who's on their high horse again?)

It's not a derail, and yes, it's good we're on the same "side." But I think what Kluwe is up to matters. the thing is, in your first post, you said you found the style off-putting, which is fine if, I think, kind of misses the point, i.e. probably for reasons related to us all being on the same side, his message is not necessarily meant for you. But when you said, "in fact if he is capable of making his point humorously and coherently without the smattering of D-list scatalogical neologisms (what in the actual fuck is a dickzombie?) that makes it worse, not better," that is to suggest that he ought to communicate differently. In my mind, that completely misses the point. It's like me saying MLK Jr. should have used fewer religious references because I find them off-putting.

The point is that because of how he delivers the message, the message gets received by people who might not otherwise hear it.

Imagine a class where the professor plays the Ayanbadejo youtube clip. Maybe effective--it's an NFL player, which makes things interesting in new ways--but there's a kind of preachiness to it. Now imagine the whole topic coming up as a story about a story--Kluwe responding to the response to Ayanbadejo--and the professor initially refusing, but finally relenting and allowing a student to read Kluwe's piece aloud in class if he thinks he can get through it without laughing. Totally different moment.

[Super Nomario]

Birk went to Harvard. They must be proud.

This was my favorite line:

Attempting to silence those who may disagree with you is always un-American, but especially when it is through name-calling, it has no place in respectful conversation.

An Ivy League education ain't what it used to be, I guess.

[nothumb]

rev: bit of a cringe at comparing chris kluwe to MLK, but yeah, point taken. i am glad he's speaking up.

Birk went to Harvard. They must be proud.

ah yes, the old canard: "by calling me a bigot you're actually being a bigot yourself!" those poor, persecuted protestant white men from ivy league schools! my heart breaks. somewhere, a tiny violin wails a mournful tune.

unlike with single parenthood (which is a more tangled issue than birk makes it out to be, but whatever) there is no evidence whatsoever that children of same sex couples are worse off than children born to heterosexual parents. it's just a nasty way of playing on peoples' prejudices.

one more player to add to the "career ending injury / financially ruinous painkiller addiction" wish list.

[Reverend]

rev: bit of a cringe at comparing chris kluwe to MLK, but yeah, point taken. i am glad he's speaking up.

Heh. I'm glad we're on the same page.

But I'd think about the cringe. It was exaggeration, but I actually gave it some thought. The great difference is that Kluwe is not putting himself in harm's way, and he knows that. But there are people who were personal friends with Dr. King who have come out and said the gay issue is today's civil rights movement (this guy, for one), and I mentioned King because he was a genius at writing speeches for his audience, i.e. the same speech would sound like a treatise on civil rights to a secular northerner and a sermon to a southerner.

Kluwe's audience? Well, the guys rat-tailing each other in the locker room are Americans too, right?

And I couldn't agree more on the Birk--only the most privileged among us would call it suppression of speech in response to someone calling us a jackass. What kind of a sense of entitlement does it take to think one's words are beyond ridicule?


Edit: Also, if you or anyone else is interested, last time someone tried to pull this "parenting crap" with respect to the gay issue, I pulled the most current research. It's a little over a year old now, but I'm thinking not that much has changed since. Link

Edited by Reverend, 30 September 2012 - 11:51 AM.

[drleather2001]

Just because you make a stupid argument in a respectful manner doesn't make it any less stupid.

WTF is Birk's point?

His entire argument stems from this idea that "Children deserve a mother and a father", and that argument is a blatent rip off of the "Children who come from mixed-race households will be confused" argument. Which is to say, it's bigotry disguised as concern, and that makes it not only offensive, but condescending and insulting as well.

[Mystic Merlin]

Not all opinions deserve to be treated with respect, and it pisses me off that people expect complete civility when someone finds their position immoral or incoherent. lolboohoo, get over it.

Just because you have a right to say it, doesn't mean you have a right to a pliant, polite audience.

[bbc23]

http://blogs.twincit...no-14-problems/
Here's the response, completely eviscerates Birk's argument

[Jungleland]

Excellent read. Like others have said before, an awesome use of a (most likely) brief chance to step on the soap box.

[The Best Catch in 100 Years]

Heh. I'm glad we're on the same page.

But I'd think about the cringe. It was exaggeration, but I actually gave it some thought. The great difference is that Kluwe is not putting himself in harm's way, and he knows that. But there are people who were personal friends with Dr. King who have come out and said the gay issue is today's civil rights movement (this guy, for one), and I mentioned King because he was a genius at writing speeches for his audience, i.e. the same speech would sound like a treatise on civil rights to a secular northerner and a sermon to a southerner.

Kluwe's audience? Well, the guys rat-tailing each other in the locker room are Americans too, right?

Surely one doesn't have to write like a deranged World of Warcraft message board poster who just discovered thesaurus.com to reach a younger audience. I agree that Kluwe is doing something great here, going above and beyond what he could have ever been expected to do as a professional athlete, etc., but brilliant prose stylist he ain't.

Edited by The Best Catch in 100 Years, 03 October 2012 - 08:36 AM.

[The Napkin]

http://deadspin.com/...ter-chris-kluwe

This is old but if your posting about Kluwe, I thought this was pretty hilarious when I read it

I found it odd that someone who has been so pro-gay marriage led with using cocksucker as a pejorative.

Unless he didn't write this part: Some people are fans of Deadspin's Why Your Team Sucks previews. But now the shoe's on the other foot! Suck on this, you cocksuckers.

[weeba]

Good article in this week's SI on Kluwe. Not yet available online: http://sportsillustr...11895/index.htm

[h8mfy]

Kluwe was also the subject of a feature in the New York Times last week:

http://www.nytimes.c...wanted=all&_r=0

[KiltedFool]

Following one of the links from the NY Times article is worthwhile, and should end up as a shopping destination for a secret santa this year.

http://www.chriskluwetshirt.com/

[weeba]

I really though that was going to be a Chris Klu Wet Shirt.

[KiltedFool]

Had the same thought when I hovered my cursor on the link, whether it would be work safe (it generally is).

[mpjc]

Kluwe ends his gig with the St. Paul Pioneer Press after the paper publishes an editorial endorsing an amendment that would ban same-sex marriage. From his Twitter feed:

Chris Kluwe ‏@ChrisWarcraft
Very disappointed in @PioneerPress editorial.http://www.twincities.com/opinion/ci_21916526/editorial-minnesota-marriage-amendment… Plessy v. Ferguson obviously doesn't mean what it used to. #lrn2civicsplz
Chris Kluwe ‏@ChrisWarcraft
You can say you're not taking a side one way or the other all you want, but if you print that in the editorial section you just took a side.
Chris Kluwe ‏@ChrisWarcraft
Sent my email to the @PioneerPress informing them I will no longer contribute to their blog network. It will be my last post on the site.
Chris Kluwe ‏@ChrisWarcraft
I will not be associated with any organization that tries to pull some bullshit like that. Have the strength of your convictions.

Deadspin:

In a piece on Kluwe’s exit and the editorial, David Brauer of MinnPost notes that this power play hits the Pioneer-Press right where it hurts: “[Kluwe’s] ’Out of Bounds’ blog has occasionally brought six-figure page views.”

Edited by mpjc, 05 November 2012 - 12:41 AM.

[lostjumper]

I don't want to turn this into V&N, but that seems like a very childish response. A paper that he blogs for expresses he disagrees with, so he takes his ball and goes home? As Brauer noted, his blog was a big draw for the Pioneer-Press. I'm sure he could have written his own editorial sharing his view on the amendment, or at the very least posted it to his blog. It appears he never even asked, just quit.

[PC Drunken Friar]

I don't want to turn this into V&N, but that seems like a very childish response. A paper that he blogs for expresses he disagrees with, so he takes his ball and goes home? As Brauer noted, his blog was a big draw for the Pioneer-Press. I'm sure he could have written his own editorial sharing his view on the amendment, or at the very least posted it to his blog. It appears he never even asked, just quit.

Well, when the paper you write for is bigoted, I don't think he could have done it any other way and certainty did not act childish. He acted exactly as his beliefs tell him too.

[Reverend]

I don't want to turn this into V&N, but that seems like a very childish response. A paper that he blogs for expresses he disagrees with, so he takes his ball and goes home? As Brauer noted, his blog was a big draw for the Pioneer-Press. I'm sure he could have written his own editorial sharing his view on the amendment, or at the very least posted it to his blog. It appears he never even asked, just quit.

What makes you say he's going home? It's the internet--he can base himself anywhere. What he decided to do is to stop helping them to generate revenue.

To me, it sounds like he has a coherent sense of responsibility.