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The featherweight went on an unprompted rant against everything from vaccines and LGBTQ+ people to Edgar Allen Poe.
Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) star Bryce Mitchell thinks public schools will turn his children gay.
The featherweight took to Instagram on Wednesday unprompted to rant against everything from vaccines and LGBTQ+ people to Edgar Allen Poe. Mitchell, 29, falsely claimed vaccinations are "poisonous" to children and “bad for their health,” spouting the widely-debunked conspiracy that they cause autism, before launching into old school homophobia.
“[My son's] going to have to be homeschooled. We’re gonna have to homeschool all our kids or they’re going to end up turning gay," he said in a video, speaking directly to the camera while holding his infant son. "I don’t want him to be a communist, I don’t want him to worship Satan, and I don’t want him to be gay.”
Mitchell then claimed public schools have removed Christian teachings like the Bible and replaced them with the works of Poe, who “shacked up with his cousin.” Poe notoriously married his first cousin, Virginia Clemm, in 1836 when he was 27 and she was just 13.
“My son ain’t gonna be reading no Edgar Allan Poe. He’s gonna be reading the Bible," Mitchell continued. "If you don’t teach your kids these things, he’s going to be fed right to the devil."
The UFC has been plagued with homophobia scandals in the past several years. Mitchell's comments come off the heels of Sean Strickland, who said in 2022 that “If I had a gay son I would think I failed as a man to create such weakness.” He doubled down on his remarks in January, subsequently going after transgender people by saying that being trans is a "mental fucking weakness" and that "everything that is wrong with the world is because of fucking [them].”
UFC chief executive and president Dana White has not yet commented on Mitchell's remarks, but previously defended Strickland's right to free speech on a January episode of The TRUTH Podcast with failed Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy. White likened Strickland's derogatory and brutal rhetoric to a fighter supporting the Black Lives Matter anti-brutality protests, saying: "Everybody can have their own opinion."
"I don’t agree with 95 percent of what this guy says, but it’s his right to say it," White said. "And if you don’t like it, tune in on Saturday night, he’s gonna get punched in the face."
