Sebastian Lunes 
Tampa Bay Rays players who declined to wear special LGBT patches and caps as the team held a “pride month” event Saturday have been called bigots for acting out their Christian faith.
Acting as a spokesman for the MLB players, Rays pitcher Jason Adam said they didn’t feel it was right for them to encourage the LGBT lifestyle, but they wanted to make it clear that “all are welcome and loved here.”
That led to an anti-Christian rant from ESPN’s Sarah Spain on Monday.
“Pride is about inclusion, so you don’t love them and don’t welcome them if you’re not willing to wear the patch,” Spain said on “Around the Horn.”
“And so we have to stop tiptoeing around it because we’re trying to protect people who are trying to be bigoted from asking for them to be exempt from it, when the very people that they are bigoted against are suffering the consequences.”
Host Tony Reali interjected, “When you say ‘trying to be bigoted’ …”
“They’re trying to use religious exemptions to affect the opportunities, services, available resources for people who are LGBTQ+,” she said.
“And a patch on the jersey in this way?” Reali asked.
“In the case of sport, no,” Spain said. “In the case of sport, though, they’re double-talking if they’re saying ‘you’re welcome’ while also saying that ‘we don’t encourage or we disagree with it.’”
In addition to Adam, the players who did not participate included pitchers Jalen Beeks, Brooks Raley, Jeffrey Springs and Ryan Thompson.
Many rebuked Spain for attacking players who were acting from faith.
Spain doubled down on her rant Monday on Twitter.
“The term homosexual didn’t exist until the late 19th century!” she claimed. “Bible references aren’t aligned w/ today’s same-sex loving relationship.”
The ESPN reporter went on to say, “Using your religion as a shield for ignorance & bigotry is antiquated–and it’s a choice. It’s a choice made of privilege: You’re not affected by the policies & laws that discriminate. You’re not endangered by the hatred that bubbles.
“It’s a choice made of ignorance: You use faith to disguise fear of the unknown & you choose not to learn or evolve. You selectively pick & choose Bible verses to ignore and/or modernize while clinging to a hate-filled interpretation of LGBTQ that’s eons past being relevant.”
Adam told reporters on Saturday the decision was about the players’ Christian faith, not hate, according to the Tampa Bay Times.
“A lot of it comes down to faith, to like a faith-based decision,” he said. “So it’s a hard decision. Because ultimately we all said what we want is them to know that all are welcome and loved here.
“But when we put it on our bodies, I think a lot of guys decided that it’s just a lifestyle that maybe — not that they look down on anybody or think differently — it’s just that maybe we don’t want to encourage it if we believe in Jesus, who’s encouraged us to live a lifestyle that would abstain from that behavior, just like [Jesus] encourages me as a heterosexual male to abstain from sex outside of the confines of marriage. It’s no different.”
“It’s not judgmental. It’s not looking down,” Adam said. “It’s just what we believe the lifestyle he’s encouraged us to live, for our good, not to withhold.”
The 30-year-old Christian noted that the players are not against anyone.
“But again, we love these men and women, we care about them, and we want them to feel safe and welcome here,” he said.
Tampa Bay manager Kevin Cash said he did not think the incident would divide the team because it came after discussions among players in recent weeks, according to The Associated Press.
“First and foremost, I think the organization has done a really good thing to have Pride Night’s supporting our gay community to come out and have a nice night at the ballpark,” Cash said.
“Impressed that our players have had those conversions and we want to support our players that choose to wear or choose not to wear to the best of our capabilities.”
I think it is fair for a non gay person to say I am not gay and I am not going to fly the queer flag on my body. If an ESPN reporter has a problem with that I don’t care. I never watch ESPN anyway. But I’d like to commend those ball players for not knuckling under to the queer’s shrill demands that they comply with all their BS. It is still a free country(I think). And Homosexual may be a recent term, I don’t know and don’t care to know, but queers have been around a long time only recently gaining the widespread political support they crave. Not too surprising since, throughout history, the most flagrant queers have been political figures such as King Herod or Alexander. The Greeks of antiquity were known for it. And who are the Greeks now? or the Romans? or the Egyptians? Pale ghosts of who they once were. I hope the USA does not follow them into insignificance, but that seems to be the way of it.
SCREW ESPN !! THIS IS THE UNITED STATES. WE HAVE FREEDOMS AND RIGHTS GIVEN TO US BY THE CONSTITUTION. LGBT AND BLACK HISTORY ARE RACIST GROUPS THAT MANY CHOSE TO TOLERATE. WHITE PEOPLE ARE NOT THE ONLY RACISTS IN THIS COUNTRY. AND, IN FACT, MOST WHITE PEOPLE ARE NOT RACIST. THERE MILLIONS OF WHITE PEOPLE THAT HAVE HELPED MINORITIES IMPROVE THEIR LIVING STANDARDS IN THIS COUNTRY IN THE LAST 75 YEARS.
THESE PLAYERS HAVE RIGHTS SO LEAVE THEM ALONE!!!!
Spain has a warped sense of equity.
equity is not equality, equity, like marxism, seeks equal outcomes, not equal treatment
It seems to me that the word equity has fallen under the color of queerness like other words such as gay (meaning happy) and rainbow (meaning the refraction of sunlight through falling water drops to produce a multicolored “bow” of light in the atmosphere). The usurpation of benign words such as these by the queers to means other things according to their own warped politics irritates me to no end. I suspect that there may be millions of others who resent this practice as well. To the queers I say you will never gain acceptance or normalization of your perversity. In this country you are free to do whatever you wish, just quit trying to cram it down our throats. The harder you try, the harder we will push back. You are a tiny little fraction of the total population do you really want to piss us all off?