The comments made by Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker at the commencement speech for Benedictine College, a liberal arts institution in Atchison, Kansas, understandably hurt a lot of people. When you marginalize people in the LGBTQ+ community, and women of all kinds, that’s going to leave a mark.
“Not the deadly sins sort of Pride that has an entire month dedicated to it,” Butker said of Pride Month, “but the true God-centered pride that is cooperating with the holy ghost to glorify him.”
So, there’s only the one thing that’s acceptable. Which is how a lot of people feel. The problem with that feeling is the emotional burden it places on those people who do not fall in line with the specific standards Butker and others of his ilk hold.
Per the Trevor Project, an organization devoted to “a welcoming, loving world” for all people, that burden shows up in some really horrifying ways.
- Suicide is the second leading cause of death among young people aged 10 to 14, and the third leading cause of death among 15-24 year olds (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2022). Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and questioning (LGBTQ+) young people are at significantly increased risk.
- LGBTQ+ young people are more than four times as likely to attempt suicide than their peers (Johns et al., 2019; Johns et al., 2020).
- The Trevor Project estimates that more than 1.8 million LGBTQ+ young people (ages 13-24) seriously consider suicide each year in the U.S. — and at least one attempts suicide every 45 seconds.
- The Trevor Project’s 2023 U.S. National Survey on the Mental Health of LGBTQ Young People found that 41% of LGBTQ+ young people seriously considered attempting suicide in the past year, including roughly half of transgender and nonbinary youth.
- Data show that bisexual youth, or those who have the capacity to form attraction and/or relationships to more than one gender, report higher rates of depressed mood, bullying, sexual assault, and physical harm
- According to The Trevor Project’s analysis of CDC data, almost half (48%) of bi young people seriously considered attempting suicide in the past year, and 27% attempted suicide. Among gay or lesbian youth, 37% seriously considered suicide and 19% attempted. And among straight youth, 14% seriously considered suicide and 6% attempted suicide.
- These suicide risk disparities among bi youth also remain constant across gender identity and race/ethnicity.
- Transgender and nonbinary young people face elevated risk for depression, thoughts of suicide, and attempting suicide compared to those who are cisgender and straight, including cisgender members of the LGBTQ+ community.
- A 2020 peer-reviewed study by The Trevor Project’s researchers, published in the Journal of Adolescent Health, found that transgender and nonbinary youth were 2 to 2.5 times as likely to experience depressive symptoms, seriously consider suicide, and attempt suicide compared to their cisgender LGBQ peers.
So, for every public insistence that people outside a certain purview are unacceptable, that’s one more kid who’s heard it far too often, and has to feel it again. We would like to assume that Butker has no idea about these statistics, and didn’t take the podium in this instance to make people feel that they are less than human. But in the end, what’s in one’s heart does not matter. It’s the effect on others that counts.
Butker then got around to insinuating that no matter how successful a woman might be outside the home, homemaker should be her ultimate outlet.
“I think it is you, the women, who have had the most diabolic lies told to you. Some of you may go on to lead successful careers in the world but I would venture to guess that the majority of you are most excited about your marriage and the children you will bring into this world.
“I can tell you that my beautiful wife Isabelle would be the first to say her life truly started when she started living her vocation as a wife and as a mother. I’m on this stage today, able to be the man that I am, because I have a wife who leans into her vocation.
“I’m beyond blessed with the many talents God has given me, but it cannot be overstated that all my success is made possible because a girl I met in band class back in middle school would convert to the faith, become my wife, and embrace one of the most important titles of all. Homemaker.”
“Homemaker” can also align as “Woman who has no control of her own financial circumstances.” Not always, but far too frequently.
According to the Institute for Family Studies, two of the most prevalent reasons women return to abusive relationships are isolation, and financial constraints.
Isolation. A common tactic of manipulative partners is to separate their victim from family and friends. Sometimes this is physical, as one woman experienced: “I was literally trapped in the backwoods of WV, and he would use my little boy to keep me close.” Other times isolation is emotional, as one woman was told: “You can either have friends and family or you can have me.”
Financial Constraints. Many referred to financial limitations, and these were often connected to caring for children: “I had no family, two young children, no money, and guilt because he had brain damage from a car accident.” Others were unable to keep jobs because of the abuser’s control or their injuries, and others were used financially by their abuser: “[My] ex racked up thousands of debt in my name.”
Not to say, of course, that every relationship with one breadwinner and one homemaker is this way. But when you look to exert an unusual amount of control over your partner, the result is the same. If Mrs. Butker is completely happy being a homemaker, more power to her. But this is not always the case, and the myth of women being better off in the home than anywhere else is an obvious tactic of manipulation and control.
Did Harrison Butker have every right to say what he said? Absolutely. But does Harrison Butker also have a responsibility for the fallout from those comments, whether it’s getting booed on the field or something far worse in line with these statistics and concepts? Also absolutely.
I don’t believe that Butker made his comments to intentionally hurt people. He wanted to put across his faith in forceful terms, and again, there’s nothing wrong with that. Unless you’re minimalizing and marginalizing others with whom you don’t agree.
In that case, you’re just a bully and a bigot. And there’s no room in today’s America for more bullies and bigots. We already have far too many of both.
