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LISTEN: Satan's Behind Marriage Equality, Says Former NFL Star
LISTEN: Satan's Behind Marriage Equality, Says Former NFL Star
Craig James, the former NFL player whose antigay views may have cost him a sportscasting job, is continuing to spew homophobic rhetoric, saying last week that marriage equality is the work of Satan.
James, who has found a venue friendly to his beliefs by going to work for the right-wing Family Research Council, appeared Friday with FRC president Tony Perkins on a radio broadcast from the group's Faith and Family Summit. They discussed the fact that James's former team, the New England Patriots, and other pro sports teams had signed on to a friend of the court brief urging the Supreme Court to rule for marriage equality in the case it will hear next month.
James wondered if players on those teams would be willing to voice an opposing view. "If I were a current player in that locker room and my livelihood depended on me being quiet or losing it because of my belief system, I worry, I wonder," he said. "So that's Satan working on us." He also said those who support marriage equality "have a problem with God." Listen to a clip below, courtesy of Right Wing Watch.
In addition to the Patriots, sports franchises signing the brief include Major League Baseball's San Francisco Giants and Tampa Bay Rays. They are among 379 corporations and employer groups endorsing the brief, with such big names as Apple, General Mills, Ben & Jerry's, Bank of America, General Electric, Aetna, Facebook, CBS, Johnson & Johnson, Levi Strauss, Microsoft, PepsiCo, Coca-Cola, Prudential, Starbucks, Target, and Disney, to name just a few.
In 2013, Fox Sports Southwest hired James as a college football analyst and quickly fired him. The previous year, while running in the Republican primary for a U.S. Senate seat from Texas, James had said being gay is a choice and that gay people "are going to have to answer to the Lord for their actions." (Ted Cruz won the primary and then the Senate seat.) James has filed a discrimination complaint against Fox Sports Southwest with the Texas Workforce Commission, alleging he was fired for his religious beliefs, and the commission is investigating.
