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  1. #37
    Join Date
    Jul 2011
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    Re: Chris Kluwe recounts his last year with the Vikings

    Quote Originally Posted by duffybr View Post
    It is entirely possible that Chris Kluwe is right about what went on in the locker room and meetings with the coaches. It is also entirely possible that the Vikings were going to find a better, cheaoer option at punter anyway. Those two things are not necessarily related, regardless of the timing of the two things. Correlation doesn't equal causation.





  2. #38

    Re: Chris Kluwe recounts his last year with the Vikings

    And people wonder "Why hasn't an NFL player come out as gay yet?"





  3. #39
    Join Date
    Feb 2009
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    Re: Chris Kluwe recounts his last year with the Vikings

    While I agree with his stance on gay marriage, I think his way of going about his message was too snarky and not conducive to getting others on board.

    Matt Birk, who I disagree with, wrote a much more eloquent piece in support of his anti gay-marriage view. Despite my disagreement, I respected his view point, didn't think any the less of him -- not as a player or human being. Certainly there are those who oppose gay marriage who I come away considering them bigots. I did not, after reading Birk's piece, come away with that opinion of him. His position was intelligently and respectfully stated,and he left it at that.

    Kluwe is more of a class clown type, trying to be funny or outrageous or whatever. I actually ended up with less respect for him than for Birk, after all of this.

    Further, as his article shows, it wasn't just activism that got him in hot water, though I do tend to believe the animosity with Priefer. I've dealt with plenty of Priefers in my lifetime. I don't think he's making that up.

    But what really sunk him is when he started branching out into other topics, like the Catholic Church/ pedophilia issue. I think that was really the one that put the Vikes over the line, because he wasn't just merely advocating an issue ("I'm Chris Kluwe, and I support ___"), but moved on into the much more difficult world of generic social commentary.

    That's one of those things where... you should probably hire a guy like Matt Birk to write your tweets for you, because you talk about handling snakes... I'm not saying you can't have the opinion he has on that BUT... if you're a public figure on social media especially, you've got to handle that so delicately that...you're probably better off not saying anything. Really, negative generalities about any religiion, race, etc.... it's gonna do you more harm than good. So why say anything?

    Which brings me to this: whether you agree with a viewpoint or not, there is such a thing as negative publicity to your employer. And the employer has (or should have) the right not to have that kind of negativity brought down on his business for something one of his employees did on his own free time. People get fired all the time for getting DWI's, and that's not even a viewpoint thing. Nobody condones DWI's, and nobody seriously thinks that if you keep a guy on that you're somehow endorsing drunk driving. But we fire them anyway.

    So in the end, it's a free country and all,and I don't think Kluwe should have been canned MERELY for supporting gay marriage. I support gay marriage, and so do many other people. And I don't think that any of us should have our livelihoods in jeopardy because of it. Likewise, I don't think Birk should have been canned for opposing it. Nor should anyone else be. But when you start going on twitter and saying provocative things to get a rise out of people or stir up a hornets' nest, and the provocative statements go beyond mere endorsement or agreement and move on to aggression, nastiness, or trashing people's beliefs, at that point I think the employer should have the freedom to pull the plug on that employee.

    Not that we know that's what happened here, but I'm just saying. Assuming it was, I think they'd still have grounds for dumping him after the church commentary brought the phone calls to the team headquarters, etc.. That one, I am guessing, was worse than the way he portrayed it in the article, since he was so detailed about the other stuff, but was kind of vague about that part of it.

    Anyway and OTOH, if any of that stuff about Priefer is true, he should be gone. It is reasonable to think a person in your employment might be gay, and to say the things he did is not only disturbing it is unprofessional, even in the rough and ready world of football. Even if he didn't think there were any homosexuals around, he shouldn't say things like that, any more than he could not and should not say the things he said, if it we were to substitute Muslim, or Jew, or Methodist, or Mexican, etc., in place of homosexual, in the comments Kluwe claims he made. You just don't say things like that in the work place, period. You can rip a guy's heart, work ethic, sense of pride, manliness, whatever.... but just trashing people's sexual orientation.. can't do it.





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