{"id":185689,"date":"2014-09-05T20:15:00","date_gmt":"2014-09-06T01:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2014\/09\/05\/in-a-choice-between-the-two-religions-of-texas-the-christian-right-goes-with-bigotry\/"},"modified":"2014-09-05T20:15:00","modified_gmt":"2014-09-06T01:15:00","slug":"in-a-choice-between-the-two-religions-of-texas-the-christian-right-goes-with-bigotry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2014\/09\/05\/in-a-choice-between-the-two-religions-of-texas-the-christian-right-goes-with-bigotry\/","title":{"rendered":"In A Choice Between the Two Religions of Texas, the Christian Right Goes with Bigotry"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It is said that that there are two religions in Texas: Jesus and football. <\/p>\n<p>The Dallas Cowboys, whose defense was pathetic last year, decided to add openly gay defensive end Michael Sam to their practice squad, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rawstory.com\/rs\/2014\/09\/04\/conservative-christians-plan-protest-boycott-of-dallas-cowboys-over-michael-sam-signing\/\">all hell breaks loose<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">Right-wing Christians plan to protest the Dallas Cowboys signing of Michael Sam, the first openly gay NFL player.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">The outside linebacker was cut last week by the St. Louis Rams, which had drafted him in the seventh round out of the University of Missouri, and picked up by the defense-starved Cowboys.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">He will join the team\u2019s practice squad if he passes a physical exam.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">The move angered anti-LGBT Christians, who had threatened to boycott the Rams before Sam was released.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">\u201cWe cannot just stand idly by as Christian values and morals are trampled,\u201d said Jack Burkman, the GOP lobbyist working to keep Sam out of the NFL. \u201cWe will do whatever we can to preserve family values in this country.\u201d<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">Burkman has drafted legislation barring gay players from the NFL, but his brother said his efforts were a publicity stunt to draw clients to his lobbying firm.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">\u201cI think the idea that he is pushing legislation that is just hurtful and ridiculous is just plain stupid,\u201d said Jim Burkman, an anesthesiologist who is openly gay. \u201cHe is not a legislator and he can\u2019t really push legislation. I don\u2019t think there are any cosponsors for a bill. It is just an attention grab and a media grab to pander to those folks who pay him to lobby on their behalf.\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I&#8217;m about to say something that I never believed that I would ever say:  Thank you Jerry Jones for doing the right thing.<\/p>\n<p>I feel dirty now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It is said that that there are two religions in Texas: Jesus and football. The Dallas Cowboys, whose defense was pathetic last year, decided to add openly gay defensive end Michael Sam to their practice squad, and all hell breaks loose: Right-wing Christians plan to protest the Dallas Cowboys signing of Michael Sam, the first &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[967,1030,1057],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-185689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bigotry","category-lgbtq","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185689"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185689"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185689\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}