MLB issued warnings to the San Francisco Giants players who wrote Bible verses on their hats during their Friday “Pride Night” game. While many on the Left are encouraging MLB to discipline the players further, they should recognize that this protest comes straight out of their own playbook.
Four of the five Giants pitchers chose to protest their team’s requirement that they wear a rainbow logo on their hats for Friday’s game against the Chicago Cubs. Landon Roupp, JT Brubaker, and Ryan Walker chose to inscribe Bible verses near the pride-themed logo, while Sam Hentges wore a cap with the Giants’ normal logo.
The Bible verse that Roupp, Brubaker, and Walker displayed was from the Book of Genesis, 9:12-16, which reads in part: “Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life. Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth.”
Speaking about his choice to wear the Giants’ normal black cap with gold lettering, Hentges said it was a decision he made with his family and the team.
“It’s just something that I feel like I was forced to support when I don’t morally support it,” Hentges said. “There wasn’t hatred behind it. I think that’s kind of something that’s misinterpreted. I don’t hate the LGBTQ community. It’s just something I believed and talked with teammates and family, and they supported it.”
Hentges is facing a decent amount of backlash for his choice, as are the rest of the Giants players involved.
As of Monday, MLB’s chief communications officer, Pat Courtney, had issued a warning to the players.
“The writing on the cap violates our rules, and consistent with normal practice, we have warned the players about future violations,” Courtney said in a statement to multiple outlets.
This warning does not come with any associated fines or affect the players’ eligibility to play in any games.
According to SFGATE, some fans are attempting to organize protests against the pitchers at Giants games, with Friday’s starting pitcher, Roupp, taking much of the heat.
Roupp notably said his and his teammates’ decisions to silently protest during Pride Night did not stem from hatred, but rather from a desire to express his Christian beliefs. Roupp explained his reasoning to reporters after the game.
“It’s just about God’s covenant and a promise that he makes to us that, you know, His faithfulness and His mercy,” he said. “That’s just kind of something I believe in, and I stand firm in that. And I’m thankful we live in a country where, you know, we have the freedom to believe what we want, and express what we want.”
Roupp’s response is a fantastic example of what both the Left and Right profess to believe: People’s right to freedom of speech and expression is one of the most important aspects of our civil and political life.
But the Left’s response to Roupp sheds light on what they actually believe, rather than what they claim to believe.
Scott Wiener, a candidate for Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) seat and a California state senator representing San Francisco, expressed his disappointment with the players’ protest and the team’s apparent “toleration,” as he called it.
“These players could have cited the rainbow bible verse on any of the other 364 days of the year,” Wiener said in a post on X. “Instead, they chose to cite it only on Pride Night & only in connection with the rainbow Giants logo celebrating our LGBTQ community. There’s only one explanation for that choice — a choice the Giants tolerated.”
Wiener’s analysis is absolutely correct: The Giants “tolerated” their players’ choice to express their beliefs. And isn’t that what “Pride Night” is supposed to be about: toleration?
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While Democrats have been hounding Republicans for being “intolerant,” this silent protest yet again proves that the issue is not tolerance, but capitulation. There will always be a very vocal contingent on the Left that demands nothing less than complete silence from the Right.
If Democrats were the party of toleration, as they claim to be, they would be praising the actions of Roupp and Hentges. Instead, as this case of the Christian Giants players shows, they continue to be the party that hypocritically shouts down anyone who disagrees with their strict standard of progressivism.