Punter To Pol: Why Do You Hate Freedom?

Athletes, like most of us, say a lot of stupid things.

“The Bible never says anything about dinosaurs,” then-Boston Red Sox outfielder Carl Everett once said, for instance. “You can't say there were dinosaurs when you never saw them. Someone actually saw Adam and Eve. No one ever saw a Tyrannosaurus rex."

Tough to argue with. Even more difficult to dispute, in a very different way, is an open letter written to Maryland State Something-Or-Other Emmett C. Burns Jr. by Minnesota punter Chris Kluwe.

Seems there’s an upcoming state ballot initiative legalizing gay marriage, which Baltimore linebacker Brendon Ayanbadejo has publicly supported. Burns, a Democrat, is ostensibly a man of God. At least, that’s how he makes a living, when not writing letters like the one he sent to Ayanbadejo’s boss, Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti, on Aug. 29.

“I am requesting you take the necessary action, as a National Football Franchise Owner, to inhibit such expressions from your employee and that he be ordered to cease and desist such injurious actions,” Burns wrote (proving that politicians are the one group of people who cede the intellectual high ground to athletes and other celebrities). On official State of Maryland letterhead, no less.

On Friday, Kluwe dealt Burns the rhetorical version of a curb-stomping at deadspin.com, where he writes and comments on an occasional basis.

This is more a personal quibble of mine, but why do you hate freedom? Why do you hate the fact that other people want a chance to live their lives and be happy, even though they may believe in something different than you, or act different than you? How does gay marriage, in any way shape or form, affect your life? If gay marriage becomes legal, are you worried that all of a sudden you'll start thinking about penis? "Oh shit. Gay marriage just passed. Gotta get me some of that hot dong action!"

Even if you wonder for whom Burns actually speaks, since he was elected to his seat in the Maryland legislature with a shade over one-third of the vote in a three-way race and apparently enjoys arguing with tow-truck drivers, he is certainly entitled to his opinion.

And so is Ayanbadejo (who responded to Burns in classy, if less-colorful, terms), as Kluwe so delightfully, and righteously, pointed out.