Michael Sam Archives - Dr. Rich Swier

Michael Sam, the first openly gay athlete drafted into the National Football League, did not make the cut with the St. Louis Rams after it trimmed its roster ahead of the start of the 2014 season.

Sam has been signed for the practice squad of the Dallas Cowboys, but given their dismal record of late we are not likely to hear much other than their losing scores. The only reason I would watch the Cowboys on TV is their cheerleaders!

Now we will be able to enjoy the season without a story every day about what Michael Sam did or said. We will not have to endure television interviews of him and his boyfriend telling us how wonderful it is to be gay in America.

If I never see a photo of those two kissing one another, I will be happy knowing that neither will a generation of young boys who want to grow up to be football players.

If you think about it, since homosexuals are about two percent of the U.S. population, it should hardly be newsworthy that a particular athlete is gay. We accept that there’s a fair percentage of gays in the arts and other fields, but gay athletes are deemed—at least by the media—to be in some special category.

When it comes to sports, most of us only want to know if an athlete has won or lost. Writing for NBC Sports, Michael David Smith probably got the Michael Sam story right. He reported that Eric Wood, a Bill’s defensive lineman, believes that “teams are avoiding Sam because they don’t want the ESPN hype that would come with having Sam.”

The plain fact of Sam’s fate was that he was not as good as the others on the preseason team. Prior to the news he was not signed, Vinnie Iyer, a Huffington Post sports writer, noted, “Robert Quinn and Chris Long are the Ram’s elite starters at defensive end. Veterans William Hayes and Eugene Sims are the projected backups. Sam’s chief competition, undrafted fellow rookie Ethan Westbrooks, was better than Sam throughout the preseason.”

To show his support, Sam’s boyfriend, Vito Cammisano, tweeted a photo of the couple together, wearing shirts from the University of Missouri, where they both attended college. In May, ESPN had aired a celebratory kiss between the two men. “You know, I can play in this league,” said Sam. Just barely.

If you think the media devotes altogether too much “news” about gays, I would be inclined to agree. There is, however, a massive propaganda campaign conducted by gay organizations to ensure that their issues are always in the news. They hardly merit such coverage. Why should their sexual orientation be the subject of so much coverage? The answer most likely is the intense liberal orientation of the news media these days.

Nor has the U.S. ever had such a gay-oriented President as Obama in its history. On July 21, Obama signed an executive order prohibiting federal contractors from discriminating “on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.” Obama said, “I firmly believe that it’s time to address this injustice for every American.” The EO amended a previous one issued by President Lyndon B. Johnson.

Everything that can be done to undermine the moral values of the nation has been underway for several decades. In December, a judge appointed by Obama, Robert J. Shelby, issued an opinion declaring that a right to same-sex marriage is “deeply rooted in the nation’s history and implicit in the concept of ordered liberty. When he was confirmed to the federal bench on September 21, 2012, no senator objected. CNN reporter, Terence P. Jeffrey, said “His opinion could fundamentally alter American law and culture.”

There is not a bit of U.S. history or a word in the Constitution to justify Judge Shelby’s decision.

The media, according to a June 2013 study released by the Pew Research Center, found that articles with “statements supporting same-sex marriage outweighed those with statements opposing it by a margin of roughly 5-to-1.” The study was of nearly 500 stories from March 18 through May 12 “primarily focused on support for the measure…”

As children return to schools, K-12, this year, their curriculums will include support for homosexuality when many older Americans recall that this subject was never a part of what was taught when they attended school.

Ensuring special treatment for gays is now part of many aspects of life in America and if that isn’t inherently unfair, unequal, and totally out of proportion to the other 98% of the population, than it is impossible not to conclude it is part of the government’s and media’s agenda these days.

None of this bodes well for America.

The homosexual mafia has struck again. This time, however, they have picked the wrong target. Beloved former Tampa Bay and Indianapolis Colts head coach Tony Dungy has been under a vicious assault for honestly answering a reporter’s question.

In an interview with the Tampa Tribune, Dungy was asked if he would he have drafted Michael Sam, the University of Missouri football player who has come out of the closet as a homosexual. Dungy’s replied, “I wouldn’t have taken him, not because I don’t believe Michael Sam should have a chance to play, but I wouldn’t want to deal with all of it [the media circus]…It’s not going to be totally smooth … things will happen.’’

There’s nothing hate-filled or anti-homosexual about Dungy’s response. Practically everyone knows Dungy is serious about his Christian faith. But more importantly, he lives his Christian faith in his everyday life.

Dungy, the first Black head coach to win a Super Bowl (2007), was born in Jackson, Mich. to Wilbur Dungy, a science teacher at Jackson College, and Cleomae Dungy, who taught Shakespeare at Jackson High School. His father, who earned a doctorate degree, was also a member of the famed Tuskegee Airmen during World War II.

With that background, I find it incredulous that White liberals began to attack Dungy for his comments and commenced to try to lecture him on civil rights and racism. Can you imagine the arrogance it takes for a White person to lecture any Black, let alone Dungy, on anything involving race and discrimination? For many years, Dungy was denied a head coaching job in the NFL because of his race; and he was reared by a mother and father steeped in the Civil Rights Movement. Yet, White liberals are going to lecture himabout race and discrimination?

Blogger, Matt Walsh, who is White, nails this point: “Meanwhile, the inevitable hyperbole comparing gays in 2014 to Jim Crow era blacks came pouring in. As one commenter put it, Dungy’s remarks were ‘Jim Crow era awful. Yes, because racial segregation and lynching can be appropriately compared to some guy saying he wouldn’t draft another guy into the NFL. Surely, it’s impossible to find any significant difference between those two things.”

Dan Wetzel at Yahoo Sports extrapolated on this idea, employing all of the self-righteous hyperbole you might expect. He lectured Dungy about civil rights, and sermonized about how Dungy’s attitude mirrors that of whites who didn’t want to share schools or public restrooms with black people.”

These rabid White liberals should have pointed the finger at Sam, not Tony Dungy. It was Sam who unilaterally decided that the world had a constitutional right to be made aware of his sexual preference. At Sam’s press conference, he said: “Well, heck yeah, I just wish you [the media] would just say, ‘Hey, Michael Sam, how’s football going?’ I would love to give the answer to that question. But it is what it is. I just wish you guys will see me as Michael Sam the football player, instead of as Michael Sam the gay football player.”

Well, he was Sam, the football player, when he kept his personal life personal. But when he decided to make the personal public, it was only natural that he would become known as Sam, the gay football player.

Training camp started last week and the mere fact we are talking about Sam’s homosexuality proves Dungy’s point – he is a distraction. Since Sam “only wants to play football,” let’s remember that he is the same person who signed a secret deal with Oprah Winfrey to do a reality show centered on his being drafted by the St. Louis Rams. Sam was so unprofessional that he never told the Rams about the deal. Rams management was ticked off, to say the least, when he showed up with a trail of cameras in tow. The secret deal with Winfrey explains Sam brazenly kissing his White lover and allowing it to be videotaped by ESPN.

And he wants us to believe that he only wants to be known as Sam, the football players?

The sad part about all of this is that the NFL has declared it open season on Christianity and people of faith. When former NFLer Tim Tebow was constantly criticized for talking about his Christian faith in interviews, Roger Goodell, commissioner of the NFL, never made any statements about the NFL being tolerant; he never said the NFL is about inclusion; he never said he was proud of Tebow’s expression of faith and nor did he applaud Tebow’s courage. Yet, the commissioner bent over backward (pardon the imagery) to publicly support Sam, the gay football player.

At the very least, those who characterize Sam’s decision to reveal his sexual orientation as courageous should summon the courage to applaud Dungy for truly being courageous – and correct.

RELATED ARTICLE: Vick defends Dungy for Sam comments

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