NFL player rants about Pride Month celebrating “deadly sins” in graduation speech as audience groans

In Atchison, Kansas this weekend, Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker, a Catholic and three-time Super Bowl champion, used his commencement speech to Benedictine College graduates as a platform to preach his hard-right Christian Nationalist values to a national audience.

If the Class of ’24 thought the day’s celebration was about them, Butker had something else in mind.

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Michael Voris said that he overcame the “sexual sins” of being gay in his youth.

Denouncing the “silence” he said that the Church desires for activist Catholics like himself, Butker was outspoken in his criticism of “degenerate cultural values”, “the tyranny of diversity equity and inclusion,” “dangerous gender ideologies,” “diabolical lies” told to women, and infectious diseases expert Dr. Anthony Fauci, among other objects of scorn.

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Like the martyr Butker portrays himself as, he reveled in a recent Associated Press story that he said was meant to shame Benedictine College for “an immense shift toward the old ways.”

He said he took “pride” in the description, “Not the deadly sins sort of Pride that has an entire month dedicated to it,” he said, adding, “but the true God-centered pride that is cooperating with the holy ghost to glorify him.”

While Butker may have found a receptive audience at the school among leadership — 10 years ago, current and then-school president Stephen Minnis forced an out basketball player to remove a Pride flag from his dorm window — the graduating class groaned at the uncharitable slap at the LGBTQ+ community.

Trans activist Charlotte Clymer characterized the speech as “incredibly lazy.”

“Harrison Butker is what I call a Toddler Christian,” Clymer posted to X, “meaning he ignores all of Christ’s teachings that may be even slightly inconvenient (non-judgment, grace, kindness, vulnerability) and obsesses over condemnation of others, which is an incredibly lazy + pathetic spiritual life.”

Harrison Butker is what I call a Toddler Christian, meaning he ignores all of Christ's teachings that may be even slightly inconvenient (non-judgment, grace, kindness, vulnerability) and obsesses over condemnation of others, which is an incredibly lazy + pathetic spiritual life. https://t.co/TNcZtfHmUe

— Charlotte Clymer