Fire Harrison Butker? K.C. Star Opinion Writer Says Yes. Time to Hire Female Kicker

AP Photo/John Amis

This is America, so everybody has to express an opinion about a Catholic man speaking at a Catholic College about Catholic theology.

Most of those opinions are absurd and based on falsehoods because, again, this is America, where progressives get to lie about everything and have their idiotic deceptions and opinions ratified in the mainstream media. 

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For those of you who live under a rock, have been out camping the past week, or who simply avoid whatever Twitter controversy on general principle, let me get you up to speed in a sentence: Harrison Butker, a Kansas City Chiefs kicker of some renown, gave the commencement address at a college in which he praised the vocation of marriage. 

Butker, as both a man and a Catholic, believes that marriage is a vocation that gives meaning to our lives and parenthood is one of the highest callings for human beings, including women. Marriage and family, he told the women, are higher callings than a career. 

He didn't disparage careers, or tell women to remain barefoot and pregnant. He simply said that marriage and family are a higher calling. 

Personally, I rarely enjoy listening to speeches, but if you want the full speech including the context, here it is:

Living in a culture where mentioning that women can become mothers is offensive, Butker's praise of motherhood is an offense beyond toleration. At least it is for progressives.

I was going to stay away from this controversy, but two things inspired me to write about it: the NFL--the employer of some truly depraved players--apologized for Butker's speech, and his hometown paper The Kansas City Star published an opinion piece calling for him to be fired and replaced with a female kicker. 

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The NFL apology was a masterclass in how not to deal with a controversy. Feminists are not known for being avid football fans, although they may be more devoted to the league than, say, the transgender and nonbinary community. It's not at all clear to me that pandering to radical feminists is going to increase ratings, but it likely will annoy a lot of male viewers who, on principle, may prefer to praise a man who loves his wife and children to one who spends his time looking and acting like a pimp. 

This reminds of the L.A. Dodgers celebrating the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, an anti-Catholic group that does fake, sexualized crucifixions while mocking nuns. 

I guess sports fans are especially anti-Catholic, just as beer drinkers hate frat boys. 

The Kansas City opinion piece--and no, it was not the editorial board of the paper calling for Butker's firing, but a Washington-based male PR guy for Democrats--was nothing but performative feminism. 

The Chiefs need to make a strategic call about Butker’s future with the team. If he could agree to shut his mouth, the current story might fade. There are, after all, plenty of athletes with backward cultural views, but they’re tolerated if they can mostly stick to sports cliches in interviews. If they’re superstars, they sometimes can keep yapping and get away with it. Harrison Butker is not Patrick Mahomes. He’s a special teams player. That gives him less leverage with the team. They could trade him for a solid kicker, or they could make a statement by signing a woman to kick. Liz Heaston, Ashley Martin, Katie Hnida or Sarah Fuller might take a call. Maya Turner would likely give serious thought to an offer. And the farm system for talent is rich. There are more than 300 players on the 14 teams in the National Women’s Soccer League. That’s more than 300 women who are professional ball kickers and don’t currently choose to be stay-at-home housewives. It would be delightful if one of them cost the Kansas City Chiefs kicker his job.

Read more at: https://www.kansascity.com/opinion/readers-opinion/guest-commentary/article288545627.html#storylink=cpy

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The media pile-on has been ridiculous, of course, because nothing offends progressives more than monogamous heterosexual happy families, who are the backbone of the bourgeoisie. Happy families and communism are forever antagonists, and since these people are communists, they are at war with the family. 

They are, as I have often pointed out, antinatalists in the extreme. The only babies they approve of are ones incubated in rented wombs and handed off the cosplaying men who pretend to "chestfeed."

Otherwise, the clump of cells should be excised from the birthing person's body ASAP.

Bill Maher jumped into the controversy with his take, and as is his recent wont, he took the radicals to task. Now Maher dislikes children, but not so much that he hates everybody who enjoys parenting. Maher is also a feminist, but he doesn't go so far as to insist that every woman should aspire to be solely a girl boss. 

To which I say: well, duh. Women deserve every opportunity in the world, but guess what: most jobs suck, and motherhood actually doesn't. Which is more satisfying: raising a child to be a happy, successful, and moral person who will love you unto death or filling out paperwork in a cubicle? 

Most of us work to live, not live to work. That's not to say that there aren't satisfying careers, but most jobs aren't that. They are jobs. In fact, if you watch most Gen Z TikTocs, they are about how much work sucks. 

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The denigration of parenthood--and it's not just motherhood, it is the vocation of parenting itself that is under attack--is near universal on the left. Perhaps this is the root of the progressive hatred of Catholicism, which is unabashedly pro-natal and pro-life. We are so scary to the left that the Biden administration briefly classified us as domestic terrorists. 

There are, of course, "good" Catholics who play the kapos for the left, just as the Hamas people have their Jewish kapos fronting for Hamas. Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi are abortion-loving Catholics who insist they are foursquare behind the religion but for the inconvenient bits like traditional marriage and having babies. Even our far-too-liberal Pope opposes alphabet ideology and abortion--he called transgender ideology "evil," which seems unambiguous to me, but Biden and Pelosi are evangelists for the ideology. 

The fascinating thing is that you don't see the counterreaction to Butker's slandering by the MSM. There is now a genre of tweets sent by successful women echoing his words: the vocation of marriage and motherhood are indeed more fulfilling than their careers. 

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Of course, Twitter is not real life, but there appears to be a great deal of support for Butker in the real world too. His jersey is now the #1 seller in men's and women's, which aren't cheap. That's a pretty penny to lay out just to support your guy. 

You literally cannot buy a women's jersey at the moment because they are sold out. Every single one of them is sold. 

If Butker thought women shouldn't be educated or have aspirations other than motherhood, a college would be an odd venue for him. However, that inconvenient fact is ignored in the rush to express outrage at the idea that motherhood is valuable. 

This controversy will of course blow over because it has nothing to do with Butker himself. He is, ironically, being kicked around like a soccer ball on the ideological field. And, as in soccer, more often than not the goals scored are rare, although history shows that the Left is better at kicking them in. 

Butker will remain at Kansas City because he is good at his job, and his employers don't seem bothered, even if the NFL is scrambling to clean up this controversy. They see the outrage headlines and run for cover, never thinking about how ordinary NFL viewers view the matter. Notice how the first one comes from an alphabet publication, "Outsports." Google wants you to see that first, despite it being the oldest. 

The Chiefs are wildly popular in Kansas City (I was there last summer I thought the city was named the Kansas City Chiefs, I saw their flags so many times), and Butker is just fine with his bosses

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Kansas City Chiefs CEO Clark Hunt's wife and eldest daughter are weighing in on the controversy surrounding kicker Harrison Butker's commencement speech at a Catholic college.

Tavia Hunt, who has been married to the billionaire businessman for more than 30 years, shared her thoughts about being a stay-at-home mom May 16, five days after the athlete sparked mixed reactions over his remarks at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kan., in which he said most female graduates would be "most excited" about marriage and motherhood.

...

Tavia continued, "Affirming motherhood and praising your wife, as well as highlighting the sacrifice and dedication it takes to be a mother, is not bigoted. It is empowering to acknowledge that a woman's hard work in raising children is not in vain. Countless highly educated women devote their lives to nurturing and guiding their children. Someone disagreeing with you doesn't make them hateful; it simply means they have a different opinion."

Tavia, who did not mention Harrison by name, encouraged people to "celebrate families, motherhood and fatherhood."

"Our society desperately needs dedicated men and women to raise up and train the next generation in the way they should go," she wrote. "We need more dialogue (and VALUES, IMO) in this country and less hate."

Gracie shared her thoughts on Harrison's speech May 17. "I've had the most incredible mom who had the ability to stay home and be with us as kids growing up," she said on Fox News' Fox & Friends. "And I understand that there are many women out there who can't make that decision. But for me and my life, I know it was really formative and in shaping me and my siblings into who we are."

Anybody who thinks this controversy is about women's rights is missing the point. Butker said nothing that would indicate that he opposes women's empowerment and ability to chase their dreams, whatever they might be. 

What offends the left has nothing to do with that; it has everything to do with undermining family values. It is their hatred of the family that is revealed, not their zeal for girl bosses. 

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CORRECTION: I said that Butker spoke at a women's college. It is coed. Sorry!

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Duane Patterson 11:00 AM | December 26, 2024
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