Mark Stern at Slate is glad the Mets lost the World Series because he thinks that their star infielder is “noxious”:
The Kansas City Royals defeated the New York Mets 7–2 on Sunday night, winning the World Series in just five games. I am agnostic as to which team deserved to take the crown. But I’m thrilled that Mets (former) fan favorite and fomenter of homophobia Daniel Murphy played a crucial role in bringing his team to an embarrassing defeat.
Before Game 4 of this World Series, Murphy was quickly becoming the Mets’ secret weapon—a “postseason hero” according to some outlets. This fame was sudden and specific, a response to Murphy’s incredible string of postseason home runs. His “heroic performance” won him comparisons to Babe Ruth and Barry Bonds. The typically droll Deadspin declared that his bat was “hotter than the surface of the sun, to a degree that defies an explanation.”
These unqualified plaudits may have been merited. But they gloss over the fact that Murphy is perhaps the most explicitly and unabashedly anti-gay figure in major league sports today. Earlier this year, Murphy unloaded his thoughts about Billy Bean, an openly gay retired player and Major League Baseball’s Ambassador for Inclusion:
I disagree with his lifestyle. I do disagree with the fact that Billy is a homosexual. That doesn’t mean I can’t still invest in him and get to know him. I don’t think the fact that someone is a homosexual should completely shut the door on investing in them in a relational aspect. Getting to know him. That, I would say, you can still accept them but I do disagree with the lifestyle, 100 percent.
Murphy then tried to qualify his statement, comparing homosexuality to undesirable personality traits like “pride”:
Maybe, as a Christian, that we haven’t been as articulate enough in describing what our actual stance is on homosexuality. We love the people. We disagree the lifestyle. That’s the way I would describe it for me. It’s the same way that there are aspects of my life that I’m trying to surrender to Christ in my own life. There’s a great deal of many things, like my pride.
Of course, Murphy has every right to hold these beliefs, which earned him praise from such luminaries as the Westboro Baptist Church. He does not have a right to expand on them without discipline. Had an MLB player said something bigoted about a black or Jewish player, the league would have reprimanded him. Instead, it took no serious action against Murphy, effectively ratifying his views as reasonable and harmless.
They are not.
This is the state of discourse today with radical secularists and elements of the religious left. Mr. Murphy’s “explicitly and unabashedly anti-gay” comments seem to me to be most tame, seem to me to be nothing more than an expression and application of considered Christian thought but Stern sees it to be nothing less than what he later in the piece calls “noxious personal prejudice.”
It is Stern that is most explicitly and unabashedly displaying noxious personal prejudice. And he’s doing so under what he wants the rest of us to believe is the banner of tolerance and open-mindedness.
It will of course only get worse. Religious expression in the common square is quickly becoming anathema and Stern’s perspective will prevail in the not too distant future.
God help us.
Crossposted at Brutally Honest.
