Chris Kluwe An NFL player who is also an outspoken gay rights supporter has blasted his former Minnesota Vikings coaches, and expressed his confidence bigotry was the reason he was dumped from the team. Despite being the best punter in the team’s history, Chris Kluwe was cut last year – with team officials saying it was a chance to give him a better chance of signing with another team. However there were suggestions it was because he consistently spoke out against homophobia in the sport, and pro marriage equality. He once infamously wrote: "I can assure you that gay people getting married will have zero effect on your life. They won't come into your house and steal your children. They won't magically turn you into a lustful cockmonster. They won't even overthrow the government in an orgy of hedonistic debauchery because all of a sudden they have the same legal rights as the other 90 percent of our population ..." While he said he didn’t know why he was let go from the Vikings at the time, Kluwe has now let rip in a piece for Deadspin called “I Was An NFL Player Until I Was Fired By Two Cowards And A Bigot”. He says when he began speaking out in favour of marriage equality in 2012, he was told by then head coach Leslie Frazier he "needed to be quiet, and stop speaking out on this [same-sex equality] stuff." In February last year Vikings general manager Rick Spielman sent him a text saying "Please fly under radar please", and the Vikings then picked a punter in the draft. Kluwe expresses most disgust towards special-teams coach Mike Priefer, who “would ask me if I had written any letters defending 'the gays' recently and denounce as disgusting the idea that two men would kiss, and he would constantly belittle or demean any idea of acceptance or tolerance," Kluwe writes. "Mike Priefer also said on multiple occasions that I would wind up burning in hell with the gays, and that the only truth was Jesus Christ and the Bible." Kluwe says once the special teams coach even said “We should round up all the gays, send them to an island, and then nuke it until it glows.” The only person who backed the punter’s stance was the team’s owner, Zygi Wilf, who shook his hand and said he was proud. Despite being regarded as a good punter, Kluwe says he knows he will never kick in the NFL again. "Whether it's my age, my minimum veteran salary, my habit of speaking my mind, or (most likely) a combination of all three, my time as a football player is done," he writes. He says he has spoken out because he doesn’t want Priefer to coach in the NFL, as he is regarded as a candidate for the Head Coach position. "It's inexcusable that someone would use his status as a teacher and a role model to proselytize on behalf of his own doctrine of intolerance, and I hope he never gets another opportunity to pass his example along to anyone else,” Kluwe says. Read Kluwe’s remarkable piece here
Credit: GayNZ.com Daily News staff
First published: Friday, 3rd January 2014 - 10:22am