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Well, it finally happened. Last Saturday San Jose Sharks goaltender James Reimer, citing religious beliefs, refused to wear the Pride-themed warmup jersey in honor of Pride night, and accordingly sat out warmups. Reimer has started most of San Jose's games this season but has mostly been splitting time with Kaapo Kahkonen, but he did not start Saturday and instead was Kahkonen's backup. This isn't the first time this season that the Pride jerseys have led to controversy—Ivan Provorov of the Philadelphia Flyers declined to wear it back in January, citing his Russian Orthodox faith, and Pride nights were cancelled in New York and Minnesota (presumably because the refusals would be conspicuous enough to cause undue controversy, but I have no evidence of this). So it's been simmering for a while, but this was the first real big blowup. Getting mad at Russians for having "incorrect" beliefs doesn't get much traction (Ovechkin's support of Putin was never that big a deal) because it's presumed that they aren't exactly the most enlightened people. And individual teams cancelling events seems suspect but teams are already too easy to get mad at for a variety of reasons, though people certainly took advantage of the opportunity. But now, with Reimer, and Anglo Protestant. conservatives finally have their Colin Kaepernick.
Reaction was predictable. The Fox News comment section duly praised Reimer for his courage to stand up against the wokeness that has come to infect professional sports. Reddit, meanwhile, seemed disgusted that the NHL would allow one of its players to openly flaunt the ideals of inclusiveness. There was also a quite a bit of armchair theologizing, with people who almost assuredly aren't religious either making fun of religion wholesale or claiming that, actually, Reimer's faith should make him an LGBT ally. Nearly absent from this conversation, though, is Kaepernick, despite the obvious parallels. Conservatives had previously argued that "politics should be kept out of sports", and that Kaepernick's nonparticipation in a team-oriented civic ritual was tantamount to injecting his own politics into the game. Even Mike Tomlin's decision to keep the Steelers in the tunnel in an attempt to avoid controversy that may have resulted from a player kneeling backfired; participation was mandatory, and Alejandro Villenueva was praised as a folk hero for conspicuously entering the field anyway to stand for the anthem. Ditto liberals, who also failed to see that the idea of punishing a player for refusing to participate in a pregame activity because it was against his religious or political beliefs is something that extends across the board; we can't pick and choose which beliefs are okay to protest and which aren't. The only real difference is that conservatives seem to believe that Pride nights are an abomination that has to go, while I never heard any serious Kaepernick supporters suggest that the NFL should do away with the anthem.
What's surprising is the lack of self-awareness. It's not that people in these comments sections don't challenge people with the obvious Kaepernick comparisons, it's that no one seems willing to even engage. I have yet to see anyone on either side make a statement about consistency (i.e. I defended Kaepernick and I defend Reimer/I criticized Kaepernick and I'm criticizing Reimer) or attempt to differentiate the situations. People usually try to differentiate because they want to appear principled and not just reacting based on their own biases, but most controversies give a little room for it. The Kaepernick case is so familiar and so alike that it's almost as if the cognitive dissonance actively prevents people from engaging. I'd like to see one person try to justify their position in light of this argument. Just one.
I get the impression from this and several of the replies (most notably those of @remzem and @SecureSignals) that a lot of users here simply do not understand the concept of "A Uniform" or what it represents in practice.
For the Record: The whole point of a uniform is that when you put it on you cease to be yourself and become a representative/manifestation of the larger group.
No one (or at least no one but the most terminally political) gives a shit if Kaepernick protests the flag out of uniform because "why should they?" The dude is entitled to his opinions isn't he? But when he protests in uniform, it is not Colin Kaepernick who is protesting the flag. It is the San Fransisco
Giants49ers and the National Football League who are doing so. That is why management was angry with him and why he ultimately got fired.This also readily explains the various sides' responses to Reimer. If you aren't the sort of person who buys in to the left's bullshit about how "everything is political" (IE a bog-standard republican) simply refusing to don the uniform of something you do not support (and thus become that afore mentioned manifestation) is just the obviously moral and upstanding choice. But if you are the sort of person who believes that "everything is political" and "speech can be violence" the refusal to affirm something is functionally indistinguishable from active hostility towards it.
Edit: correction
Kapernick played football for the 49ers, SF giants are baseball.
You are correct, My bad. I've always been kind of a baseball guy and "The Giants" are just my in-built word association for "San Fransisco's Team".
Yes we should have standardized sports mascots. It's dumb that the Lakers, named after Minnesota's plentiful lakes, play in LA and the Cardinals play in Arizona. It's unfortunate that the brand is so locked in now but franchises should change as soon as they move.
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