I’m sure everyone has by now heard about the 5 baseball players from the Tampa Bay Rays who declined to celebrate homosexual behavior. In this post, we’ll take a look at a couple of reactions to their decision from the secular left. And then after that, I’m going to talk about the time I was working for a large FT100 corporation, and my manager asked me to wear a rainbow ribbon.

First, the facts, as reported by PJ Media:

On Saturday, the Tampa Bay Rays held their annual “Pride Night” game. As part of the festivities, players wore a special rainbow patch on their uniforms to support LGBTQ (and whatever new letters they’ve added this week) pride. Well, most players did. A few players decided to take the brave step of not playing along, choosing not to wear the patch on their uniforms.

ESPN reports that “Among players who elected to remove the logos were pitchers Jason Adam, Jalen Beeks, Brooks Raley, Jeffrey Springs, and Ryan Thompson, according to the Tampa Bay Times. According to CBS News, “Adam was elected to speak for the group after the game, saying it was a ‘faith-based decision’ for many of them.”

[…]The “Pride Night” event included “members of the LGBTQ community” taking part in festivities, and the Rays organization gave out mini Pride flags.

These baseball players are not as capable at explaining the Christian position on homosexuality as Frank Turek or Michael Brown. Still, they declined to participate, and that’s good as far as it goes. But even their decision to decline to participate got them into hot water with the secular left radicals.

Life Site News reported:

The five Tampa Bay Rays pitchers who because of their Christian faith declined to wear rainbow-themed insignias on their hats and jerseys during the team’s “Pride Night” celebration last weekend are being attacked as “bigots” by liberal commentators.

“Oh for God’s sake,” tweeted USA Today Sports columnist Nancy Armour.

“These folks who bastardize religion to suit their bigotry would do well to actually READ the New Testament. I’d recommend starting with Matthew,” she sneered.

“That religious exemption BS is used in sports and otherwise also allows for people to be denied health care, jobs, apartments, children, prescriptions, all sorts of rights,” averred ESPN commentator Sarah Spain on the sports network’s popular “Around the Horn” talk show.

“We have to stop tiptoeing around it because we’re trying to protect people who are trying to be bigoted from asking for them to be exempt from it, when the very people that they are bigoted against are suffering the consequences,” she continued.

Justifying the trampling of moral convictions and religious liberty is very popular among the “compassion” crowd, who have made the decision that “don’t judge” is more important than what Jesus says about marriage being between a man and a woman.

(link to tweet above)

So, let me tell you about what happened to me when I was working for a big FT 100 company that was also a platinum partner of the Human Rights Campaign, the largest gay rights lobbying organization in America.

Our company building was decorated with gay rights materials, which were posted by gay activists with the approval of management. People without computer science degrees were regularly promoted to IT positions, simply because they were willing to toe the company line on “diversity and inclusion”. We even had to explain what we had done to celebrate diversity and promote inclusion in our performance reviews.

For pride month, little bowls of rainbow pins were distributed on every floor. Everyone except me was wearing them. So, my manager, a divorced single mother named Tracy, decided to bring a rainbow colored pin to my desk in front of all the other people on my team and ask me to put it on. I said, “put it on the desk, and I’ll wear it later”. Then I tossed it into the garbage as soon as she left.

I have no doubt that my views caused me a lot of trouble in that company. We had several gay rights activists, including one who attended a Unitarian church. They were constantly causing trouble for me, and trying to chat me up to find out my views. I’m sure if I had told them anything, they would have gone straight to HR. I had a lot of controversial conversations in that company. Just not with the gay activists, and not with Human Resources.