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Washington Redskins quarterback Kirk Cousins is making news for remarks he made suggesting he would be okay with a gay teammate, because “nobody’s perfect” and he wants to be able to proselytize them:
“From a football standpoint, if the guy can help us win, come help us win,” Cousins, who is a devout Christian, is quoted by MLive as saying during an appearance at Michigan’s NorthPointe High School. “Now, there are a lot of teammates in my locker room right now who may not have a homosexual lifestyle, but they have sins, too. They’re not perfect. So I don’t say they can’t help us win. Nobody’s perfect.“
He then added: “To that degree, we’d welcome him into our locker room and say come help us win, and hopefully I can love him like Jesus and hopefully show him what it means to follow Jesus.”
His heart might partially be in the right place, but that’s so condescending and gross. I’m well aware that in fundamentalist Christian communities, they’re still struggling with this idea of “hating the sin, loving the sinner,” but it needs to be repeated again and again that that concept is simply false. As in, “hating the sin, loving the sinner” doesn’t exist when it comes to LGBT people. If Cousins has a gay teammate, the teammate’s sexuality is simply part of him. It’s not a “sin” and openly gay people are not “struggling” with it. Moreover, his desire to “show him what it means to follow Jesus” is misguided and rude. First of all, the gay teammate might be a Christian, as millions of LGBT-identified people are people of deep Christian faith. Regardless, he’s not a mark to be viewed as a possible opportunity for conversion.
Kirk Cousins and any other fundamentalist Christians who are still confused about this need to understand: you either accept us or you don’t. There is no middle ground. Being gay is not an “imperfection” and loving of someone of the same gender is not to be equated with whatever laundry list of sins Cousins imagines his straight players to be partaking in. It’s offensive and nasty, and if that’s what Fundamentalists believe “love” is, then nobody wants it, because the rest of us have a better, more highly evolved understanding of “love.”
