I understand why people get freaked out when cases of pedophilia happen in the church, and some people cover it up and weird things happen. I don't think it's right to cover up those things, but with a religion it ends up being so close to someone's heart people get weird about it and forget that sometimes things are more important. It makes sense. (like I said, I think it's wrong, but at least there is logic behind the weird things that are happening)
I don't understand how the same thing happens with football. Football, no matter what Americans think, is not a religion. Brett Favre is not God and Peyton Manning is not Jesus and Andrew Luck is not the second coming of Christ. Somehow, we have turned a really great sport into a religion. We worship the players, who are unworthy of worship. And we act like the idea of not having football is the worst thing that could possibly happen in life.
Football, the sporting event that involves thinking about plays and then running into people while eating food you really shouldn't eat, is something I love a lot. Football the religion, I hate. The religion of Football is homophobic, sexist, violent, and becoming more and more corrupt. That is not ok.
Look at what happened with places like Penn State and Steubenville? Penn State spent 10 years covering up the rape of boys. Sure Jerry Sandusky is in jail now, but when it was all going down people were upset about the football team. Those poor football players will have to suffer because of this trial and the fallout of this case. And Joe Paterno can do no wrong, and the entire football program was protected by the school. The school was helping the football program hide the fact that one of their coaches was regularly raping little boys. And people were worried about the FOOTBALL TEAM??
In Steubenville a football team raped a drunk girl. Because that's not bad enough, later more high school boys made a youtube video laughing and joking about what it is like to have sex with a "dead girl". (They didn't realize the girl was drunk and not dead, that is how incapacitated she was). The city of Steubenville is divided on the issue because while the girl was raped, she was also drunk..so it was kind of her fault and those poor boys are going to have to live with this the rest of their lives. And they don't want this to ruin their teams chances of winning the championship! Seriously.
Football players committing rape has become such a regular activity that even the left leaning new york times phrases it like this "...an unconscious girl had been sexually assaulted over several hours while others watched. She may have even been urinated on." Because being peed on is so much worst than being raped. (Both are terrible, but, I mean, rape is obviously the worse option).
How many players on the NFL have committed rape? More than I can even count. And the response is always, well she is doing it for money and we don't want to ruin his career. Because god forbid we tarnish the NFL over something as silly as rape. She was probably wearing clothes anyways, so that means she was asking for him to take them off right? (Ben Rothesberger and Kobe Bryant are still huge stars, and yes I know Kobe doesn't play football, but he needed to be mentioned here). Shouldn't there be a rule that says once you have raped somebody you can't play professional sports anymore? That seems fair to me, but in our society we don't want rape to ruin a mans life. Because if rapists couldn't play football all of our favorite players would be kicked out of the sport. And then what? Obviously we would all die, I guess.
Football is one of the few institutions that is openly and comfortably homophobic. When the Boy Scouts were homophobic people wrote letters and protested and said that boys should be allowed to be Eagle Scouts regardless of their sexual orientation. When marriage was homophobic people protested. When the military was homophobic people fought to get DADT repealed. When schools are homophobic kids are taught not to bully, that everybody is allowed to be themselves. But when football is homophobic, boys will be boys. In football it's still OK to bully, it's still OK to tell boys they will have to stay in the closet or lost everything. In football being gay is still the worst possibly offense. Why?
I don't know if the Manti Te'o thing was an elaborate beard scheme or not, but the more details I hear about it the more I think it was. (beard: a person of the opposite sex being used by a gay person to disguise their gayness. As in, a beard is a great disguise). In case you live under a rock or don't follow sports drama here's a quick debrief: Manti had a GF who died of Leukemia. Sad. But then we found out the girl was actually a dude who had been scamming everyone and acting as the GF. Weird. Manti claims he wasn't in on it. In an interview with Diane Sawyer she asks Manti if he's gay, his response was "no, no, no. FAR from it. Definitely not". Later, the scammer is asked why he decided to end the scam and he says it was because he was in love with Manti.
My theory: Manti is gay, he fell in love with scammer but knew he couldn't come out. He would lose his career if he did. So they made up this girl. Then as scammer fell deeper in love he didn't want to lie anymore, Manti didn't want to lose everything. And the whole thing blew up in their faces. (I don't know why they killed her off. Even if Manti wasn't in on it I don't get why she was killed off)
All this because being gay in football means losing your NFL career. Manti was a first round pick and now, he's not. Side note: being part of a scam drops you down more in the draft than rape. Are you starting to see how insane this is? Being gay is a huge offense, but being a rapist is just another part of being a pro-football player.
That is what we tell kids. Boys, eventually you should find yourself at a bar waiting for a hot waitress to bring you a beer and you should hit on her. She is nothing more than an object. Girls, you should strive to be an object. Find a guy who thinks you're hot. Don't worry about being healthy, it's about being hot. If you fight for your intelligence we will call you angry and man-hating.
Oh, but you can be anything you want to be. Good luck kids!
We can't tell kids to stop bullying if adults are bullies. And we can't tell kids they can be anything they want to be if when they are adults that won't be true. And we can't tell little girls their body is their own if when they grow up their body actually belongs to the football player that decides he wants to rape her. And canceling a season of football to prevent rape seems ok to me. Because football is not actually a religion.
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