Hey, and welcome through another episode than nonprofits. You know, sometimes people only open their mouths just to change feet, and Cynthia is going to lead us into a story about one such person who had to change his feed several times in the same speech. Cynthia, Well, the NFL is actually distancing itself from controversial comments made by Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker. During a
recent commencement address. Butker criticized Pride Month diversity initiatives and suggested women find more fulfillment in marriage and motherhood than careers and sparks. That actually sparked widespread backlash. The NFL stated that Butker's views do not reflect the league's stance on inclusion. Glad and many others, including the sisters of Mount Saint Scholastica Monastery,
condemned his remarks. Butker's comments, included a reference to Taylor Swift, have generated sig magnificant criticisms online, you know, from the swifeties, and also posing an optical problem for the NFL and the Chiefs. The story is actually from aj Willington from CNN, published on May seventeenth, twenty twenty four. Now, Jimmy Bucker does seem to have isolated himself with the speech. Can
you elaborate on that. Yeah, well, not only is the NFL distanting, it's from distancing itself from him, but so is his own team. I mean, the chiefs have not responded for comment, and it seems as if they kind of just want this whole thing to blow over. It doesn't seem that many people are stepping up to support him, at least, you
know, not anybody of any consequence. Of course, we see Christian nationalists and everybody praising him, the same people who told Lebron James to shut up and dribble, or other athletes Colin Kaepernick, for example, who have something to say. You know, they're not taken seriously, they're not revered, right, But Butcker's being revered by usual suspects. In any case, many people are distancing themselves, especially members of Catholic organizations. Particularly I want to
talk about the Sisters of of Sount met Mount Saint Scholastica. You know, I think this Catholic order of women speaking out against Butker speaks to a larger picture of women within Christianity not really taking what they've been dealt right, being told their whole lives being told for generations, thousands of years that they are subordinate to men. Standing up to this kind of rhetoric is truly I think, uh, you know, enlightening. I think promising is the word I'm
looking for, And so that was what stood out to me. Cool Eli, do you do you think Bucker might have been creating straw men with the speech? Uh? In you could say in a way, so, I mean he refers to it seems the way I understand what he says is that he's referring to women having success testful careers as a diabolical lie. And similarly, somebody that I was discussing this online with referred to it. He said, He's like, do you really think women are more excited for an Associate
of the Month titled than for a family and kids? And my response to that is, if you're equating like having a career with being an Associate of the Month, that either is just a massive straw man to what the problem is, or it's an honest indicator of his and Butker's opinion about the value of women in the workforce or in business or the sciences or politics, or academics or education or medicine, like, do I need to keep like there's more? Is that enough? There's so many things that women can do.
A pair of young women in high school recently trigonometrically solved pythago the pythagoreaan them theorem, which for the past hundred years was thought to be impossible, and to young women in a high school in New Orleans did it. Women can do so many things that have nothing to do with having a family or kids or what men want them to do. And that's what Harrison Butker is messing. Now. He had some pretty unpopular opinions about Pride Month and Cynthia.
Do you think this is just pointing out the clash between outdated and religious ideas and modern day progressivism. I think that Butker is very much so stuck in the fifties with his particular adolism. You know what he said about, you know, the LGBTQ community, basically saying that, you know, Pride Month is labeled as a deadly sin, and also even talking about like, you know, how diversity and equity initiatives are just like you know, wait,
wait, what what is deadley about pride? That's a good question. I'm starting to catch off. But that's just such a strange because that's such a strange thing to say, I'm sorry, God, No, No, you're fine. No. It is like, you know, I think that one of the things that a lot of a lot of like you know, fundamentalist
Christians and he even maybe some Catholics actually do. It's like, you know, do this equation that you know, homosexuality in of itself is a deadly sin, right, but you know, you know, the Bible only addressed this homosexuality like six times, you know, and that's like between the Old
Testament and New Testament, that's the only time that addresses it. And if you actually look at the the times that it addresses it, it's less about the act and more about like you know, some of the the acts that came behind the act as well as far as like you know, like let's say, for instance, like Sodom and Gomorrah Solimon Gomora was not necessarily about
you know, men having sex with men. Sodom and Gomora was more so about violence that was actually being wrought against the people that were in that area at that time, and that's why God decided to go ahead and get rid of it, you know, so this, so this whole thing about deadly sins and people actually just celebrating who they are as just like, you know,
something that's completely diabolical, is just absolutely heinous and crazy. And I think that the more that I was listening, because I actually sat through Butker's speech, and I know that I took the l for all of us, okay, And as I was sitting there, I'm like, oh my goodness, I feel like I'm sitting in a really bad episode of Donna Reed from the nineteen fifties, especially when he started to cry Kelly and Panel when he talked about his wife now wife that he met in middle school and said that
one of her greatest things that she's ever did is become a mother and a homemaker. And and to be honest, like, you know what, it's probably a good thing that I wasn't his wife, because I probably would have ran up on stage and calls violence. But that's neither here nor there. No, I would never do that. Maybe, But I digress. So this thing that he's really saying about, you know, everything that's you know,
supposedly the ideal of how things are supposed to go. As a sister het white male because that's basically the ideologies that he was saying that should be women belong in the home. Women are supposed to be mothers. Women's highest regard, even if you have an education, should be making sure that you are running a household for your husband and your children, that you know.
Pride month should never be a thing. Diversity, equity, inclusion are all these different things, right, Like, basically, you want to take the country back pre civil rights movement, that's what you really want to do. And I'm glad that there was some distancings that was happening. And even though he's a fairly young person that still has these really outdated ideologies. You know.
The one of the things that I'm really hoping that maybe his teammates could do, who may be a bit more woke, is to actually do some intervention and educate this person on why his rhetoric is false and faulty and dangerous. Yeah, I agree. I don't want women, any particular women to get the wrong oppression that we don't think they should be homemakers and mothers if that's what they want to do. But I don't think that's the purpose of
and I think that's what Bucker was kind of communicating with this speech. Now, Eli, I think, Eli, Jimmy me. We've all had experience with working women. Eli, what have your experience has been like? Well? I well, I mean personal experiences. Something that sticks out to me a lot, or it doesn't really stick out to me, but I thought of it when I was reading this article. Is that, like one of
my closest friends just became the general manager at her rock climbing gym. She has no kids, she's never been married, doesn't isn't in a relationship, doesn't seem to have an interest in any of those things, and it's perfectly happy. If anybody asked me, which they didn't, I would say that she is successful. She seems successful, and it has nothing to do with being a mother, being a wife, having a family. It has nothing to do with any man or any other person except her and what she wants
to do. And she became the manager because she just likes to work, she likes to rock climb. She did those two things together and that's what's fulfilling for her. I agree with what you said. People who want to be homemakers, who want to be mothers, who want to be wives and stay at home. That's perfectly fine. It's the idea of placing a value judgment on which of those things is right or better or the ought that's when we start to have issues. Yeah, I really found this really kind of
insulting that he would say this at a commencement speech. Hey, women, you went to college, you got yourself a degree, But who the fuck cares? You got to stay home and take care of the kids anyway. You know what, I have something I want to say to that though, because well, you know what, I was going to just ask you what that if you thought this was an inherent problem with religion today and the way
it treats women, Oh, of course, man. Religion has to order itself, and religion needs victims, right, and it looks inside of itself. It's like a virus almost, you know, the way that religion kind of spreads. It needs to kind of infect people. It needs a host, and it makes hosts out of women, it makes hosts out of children. It allows itself to stay, to stay in place because it's got people that can keep the order, keep the order intact. And this is not
something that's going to go away. Women are attacked in every religion, right, and I've said that before, and I've seen comments on my videos where people say, Okay, well, what about the religions that are good for women? Which ones name one, call me and let's talk about it, because I don't know what you're talking about. And so I do want to say on that note that you we don't have to say, well, women
can work or be at home. They can do both, right. You know, society is a little bit harder on women because of their natural child rearing role that they often take on and having the baby close to them for longer and earlier on. We as a society need to be able to compliment them to make life easier for them. But you know what, like you
said, you know, we have experience with working women. I know female commanders, generals that have children that are incredibly influential to other people that our country would be worse off if they were not in the leadership roles that they were in, and religion would systematically remove them from that by subjugating them to
men. So there's my long answer on that. I just want to reiterate women have children and work, you know, do what you want to do, don't do any of it, but to kind of pigeonhole somebody to an either or scenario is just wrong. Okay, now I'm going to try to drag the drag Cynthia back in again. We have an election to worry about, we have innocence being slaughtered in other parts of the world, and the big thing everyone was worrying about for a few days was something that this kicker
said. Do you feel like this was kind of a distraction from things that were going on? It can be if you let it. I think that even though that he said the things that he said, and I know that there's like bigger issues other than the Kickers' ideologies from nineteen fifty two, I think that it's important to still be able to highlight these things because we're still just feeling women, especially disparities when it comes to how we show up in
workplaces and still having to balance homewise. I was listening to an NPR story today about childcare and about how expensive me going through that right now? Oh gosh, I know. And it's still the women who take the brunt of childcare issues and making sure you're paying for it, oftentimes trying to work additional
hours and things of that nature in order for you to afford it. And it was even reported that childcare is oftentimes coming up as twenty percent of a person's income instead of maybe being six or seven percent, which it ought to be. And you could and that's a lot of attributing factor, right, And it's not to negate anything else that's going on in the world that we should be very much so aware of speaking up about being an ally to those
who are experiencing suffering around the world. I'm very conscious of that, but I also have to be conscious of the brunt of the burden that is being placed, especially on women themselves, when it comes to having to walk this line of making sure that if you are a parent, that you're the best
parent in the world, that you're keeping a roof over your head. And also, you know, we had a very long tradition of people working, like when you are in a multiple generational home, or even if you are in a two parent home where both parents are working versus just one parent actually going to work in one parents staying at home, a lot of times that is not reality, that's not tenable, And especially like when you are looking
at the cost of being in different cities around the United States, and how you have to keep up a certain you know, income level in order for you to afford things like food, shelter, transportation, insurance, et cetera, et cetera. And you know what, and the thing about this particular guy, Buckker, is that, yeah, you can do that. You are NFL kicker, you know, no pun intended, who is making millions of dollars a year. Yeah, you can afford to have kids and your
wife can stay at home. That is not the reality for the majority of us that are living in the real world. Butker, so I need for you to actually, like I said, I'm hoping that the Kansas City chiefs are listening to, like somebody listen to this or listen to like the myriad of commentary about Buckker's commentary right and really get him into line saying that, hey guy, the craft that you are spewing is not the reality of life right now, okay, And you need to go ahead and dial it back
because the people and especially for the people that are coming to our games who are supporting us, our average working class people, and you need to respect who they are, right And these are people that and a lot of times probably don't have our scraping together the money to go see one of these games. Right. These are people that are working three days a week just to
pay their housing. Then they're working on Thursday to pay for the electric bill, and then on Friday and they're working to pay the phone bill and the gas bill, and then they have to go to work Saturday and Sunday to feed their family or watch the kids for two days during the week, two or three days during the week while the wife goes out and does it. So you're right, I don't think he has as much of a clue as what we're going through in that respect. Yeah, I would totally agree with
that. Now, one of the things that really happened with this, there was a lot of backlash to the things he said. And I don't know if any of you looked at what right wing media said about the backlash, but they turn this not into an attack on Butker, but an attack on Christianity itself. And I wanted to get I wanted to get everybody's ideas on
that. So Jimmy, let's start with you. Well, I think that it's easy to play the unoffended card, right when you have somebody that is a legitimate target that for the reasons that we all just listed would be completely
torn down in an argument over the facts. Right, So you have this guy who is a clear representation, just through his comments alone, a clear representation of the socio economic divides in this country and the fact that the people on top don't really care about the people on the bottom, Right, they
don't really care about the people who are suffering. We can have a conversation about that, and I can point to Butker all day long and say, look, this is exactly what people are rallying against when they talk about these kinds of issues. We can talk about how women are being oppressed, right, especially by religion, or how women have it harder in society. We
could talk about that all day long as well. But you know what makes it more difficult is when a group of people get together and say, hey, you insulted my religion, and and you know they're they're That's the real distraction, right, that's the real distraction to take take eyes off of Butker, who was essentially and I'm going to air quote this a godsend UH for the conservatives and UH and the the Christian nationalists and nationalists in this country because
Ironically, those are the people that were terrified that Taylor Swift was at the super Bowl because it made them look bad because she was more popular than their candidate, because she's more popular than a lot of them are. And here we have this guy who serves that role for them, and we can pick them apart easily, and they turn around and say, Okay, well now
that's my religion. Uh, and it's just a cop out. Honestly, Eli, what do you think about this, the backlash that you know, the right wing media calling in an attack on religion, not on Butcker's actual speech. I think I agree with Jimmy's last point exactly. They're they're just and kind of like I've mentioned before, they were kind of just turning it into something else so that they can protect their religious views. Again, just so I really, I don't have very much of anything to add to what
Jimmy said. It was pretty succeed it was very extinct. It's very clear to call it an attack on Christianity. I mean, every time I'm on it feels like I talk about that graphic with the umbrellas that describes the model for a godly or a christly marriage with and it always the idea of marriage and Christianity, or of women in Christianity is that they're subservient to men. And obviously all of his other things that he's you know, he talked about
during this speech, they're all these ideas of Christianity. It's not that we're attacking the religions, that the ideas that you have because of it are bad ideas and we need to get rid of those. If you can have your religion without the bad parts, sure, but I think you get rid of the bad parts, don't have the religion anymore because all the good parts we can get from something else too. Cynthia, we started this segment with you, and I want to end it with you. I want to give us
some final thoughts before we finish. Yeah, you know, in the end. But curse speech is just a stark reminder of the persistent class between progressive values and outdated and his comments have not only alienated a significant portion of the NFL's women they but also put him at odds with the league striving for inclusively.
You know, the kicker, he really needs to remember that personal beats, beliefs are just that they're personal, and when you put them in a public platform, especially in such a regressive way, expect the world to kick back. No punitent. That was great. That was a great message for Butker. Now, if you want to watch something exciting, informative, maybe a little bit controversial, you can now watch AXP twenty four to seven lives
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