The deranged calls to punish Harrison Butker

Harrison Butker did nothing wrong, and the outrage over his speech is completely disproportionate to what he said.

In 100 years, no one will care what I did for a living. No one will care about my career or professional accomplishments. I will be dead, and my co-workers will all be dead and therefore will not care about what I did. My legacy will be my children, my grandchildren, my great grandchildren and my great-great grandchildren. That is literally the only lasting mark I will leave on this world. This is true for 99.9999% of all humans.

This, of course, leads me to Harrison Butker and the fact that it was "controversial" for a Roman Catholic football player to say things that align with Roman Catholic doctrine at a Roman Catholic school. I mean, who could possibly expect that someone would actually agree with the doctrines of his church and the position that having children is a good thing - a position that was first established in Genesis 1:28 and has been universally accepted across two thousand years of church history by both Roman Catholics and every Protestant denomination.

Butker's speech has been demonized as some sort of a call to keep women trapped in domestic slavery, unable to have a career outside the home. However, Butker talked about how marriage is a vocation for both men and women and how part of his vocation is to be a better husband and father. Having children strengthens the church, society and the parents themselves. Study after study has shown that women are happier when they are in a stable marriage with children than otherwise. The same is true for men, and it also tends to increase their earnings. Always remember that exceptions do not invalidate a general truth, especially when that truth is reinforced with statistical data.

Predictably, there have been calls to punish Butker for espousing church teaching that has stood for two thousand years. This would be a bad look for the league, especially after the NFL waited for months to punish a player for the Baltimore Ravens who had obviously engaged in domestic violence when more video was released that made the situation politically untenable. Does the NFL really want to alienate tens of millions of Christians who attend games and buy merchandise?

This is a classic case of blowing things out of proportion. Butker did not say that women should be banned from the workforce, and he did not demean women who have a career. He simply offered another path for both sexes and gave an evangelistic message about submitting to Christ as Lord and Savior. The fact that so many people were enraged at his message says a lot more about them than it does about Harrison Butker.