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This post has very little to do with politics, but then again, if one considers GOP positions on equal rights and on related issues, perhaps quite a bit.
It has nothing to do with Christmas, but then again, if one believes in the true Christmas spirit, perhaps everything.
It happened ten months ago — an eternity in terms of the public’s memory.
Not being a sports fan — except for faithfully following my alma mater’s erratic football trajectory — I had not heard this until today and I apologize to those who have heard it and who may have already digested or discarded it.
Having seen the perennial attacks on equal rights and other social issues — what the other side snidely calls “feel-good politics” — and having a special place in my heart for “gay rights,” the following words by longtime Texas sportscaster Dale Hansen back in February, 2014, struck a chord.
Hansen was commenting on the fallout of the announcement by Missouri’s All-American defensive end, Michael Sam, that he is gay.
Here are some of Hansen’s remarks, courtesy WFAA.com . (For the full transcript, please click here)
“Several NFL officials are telling Sports Illustrated it will hurt him on draft day because a gay player wouldn’t be welcome in an NFL locker room. It would be uncomfortable, because that’s a man’s world.
You beat a woman and drag her down a flight of stairs, pulling her hair out by the roots? You’re the fourth guy taken in the NFL draft.
You kill people while driving drunk? That guy’s welcome.
Players caught in hotel rooms with illegal drugs and prostitutes? We know they’re welcome.
Players accused of rape and pay the woman to go away?
You lie to police trying to cover up a murder?
We’re comfortable with that.
You love another man? Well, now you’ve gone too far!”
Hansen then comments on the time, not that long ago, “when we were being told that black players couldn’t play in ‘our’ games because it would be ‘uncomfortable.’ And even when they finally could, it took several more years before a black man played quarterback…Because we weren’t ‘comfortable’ with that, either.”
Hansen adds that so many of the same people who used to feel uncomfortable — “(and the many who still do)” — are “the same people who say government should stay out of our lives…But then want government in our bedrooms.”
Hansen admits that he is not always comfortable when a man tells him he’s gay and doesn’t understand his world, “But I do understand that he’s part of mine,” he says.
He concludes with a quote by civil rights activist Audre Lord: “It is not our differences that divide us. It’s our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences,” and adds:
“We’ve always been able to recognize ’em. Some of us accept ’em.
And I want to believe that there will be a day when we do celebrate ’em.
I don’t know if that day’s here yet. I guess we’re about to find out.
But when I listen to Michael Sam, I do think it’s time to celebrate him now.”
If we righteously insist on celebrating “Merry Christmas” instead of “Happy Holidays,” then it is also high time to celebrate our differences with Michael Sam and with so many others in the true — not the political — spirit of a “Merry Christmas.”
Listen to Dale Hansen, below, and have a very Merry Christmas or whichever Holidays you prefer to celebrate.
Lead image: www.shutterstock.com
The author is a retired U.S. Air Force officer and a writer.