Are We Being Forced to Embrace Something We Should Simply Endure?

 Sports organizations are attempting to force their athletes to support LGBTQ “Pride” events. The National Football League, the National Basketball Association, and Major League Baseball have all bowed to the cowards who are using force to support an agenda. Now it appears that the National Hockey League is joining them.

More than ten days ago, Ivan Provorov, a player for the Philadelphia Flyers, made the news because he refused to wear a Pride jersey. Provorov is Russian Orthodox and apparently the only player to make a stand. As reported by Fox News:

Provorov refused to participate in pregame warmups where players wore Pride-themed jerseys and wielded hockey sticks wrapped in rainbow Pride tape. “I respect everyone,” he told reporters after they won the actual game against the Anaheim Ducks. “I respect everybody’s choices. My choice is to stay true to myself and my religion.”

As a result of Provorov’s stand, his Philadelphia Flyers jerseys have been selling out in multiple online stores. It appears that many Americans and Canadians are supporting Provorov stand. It also appears that the New York Rangers organization is aware of the support that he has received. The New York Rangers were scheduled to wear LGBTQ “Pride” jerseys during pregame warmups last Saturday, but none of the members of the team chose to do so. Dennis Prager noted the situation in an article. 

The Flyers and, apparently, the Rangers learned the truth about their fans: The vast majority of them – and presumably of Americans and Canadians in general – do not wish to discriminate against those who are LGBTQ, but they do not want their teams to go on record s expressing “pride” in those who are LGBTQ.

This mirrors society at large. The vast majority of Americans believe in tolerance of LBGTQ individuals but not in organizations expressing pride in them.

Why is this?

Because pride is not about tolerance. Pride is totalitarian.

Tolerance is about behavior. Pride is about thought.

The proof is that while there are laws governing tolerance, there are no laws governing pride. And if there were, most people would understand that such laws would enter the realm of thought control.

Most people could not articulate the totalitarian nature of LBGTQ pride. But they do sense it. That is why Provorov’s jersey became the Flyers’ bestselling jersey.

Prager continued by explaining that Americans do not oppose the many ways that “pride” is supposed to be shown because they hate gays. “They do so because they intuit that this is totalitarian – that they and their teams are being forced into groupthink. He said that the “Left chose the word ‘pride’ and not ‘tolerance’ because pride is about thought.” He added that leftism is different than liberalism and conservatism – “leftism is totalitarian. And totalitarianism controls thought as well as speech.”

According to Prager, the Left wants our minds as well as our behaviors. It is not enough for us to show tolerance for a way of life that we do not support. They are trying to force us to not only be tolerant but to accept the behavior and have “pride” in it. The whole situation made me think of the words credited to Alexander Pope: “Vice is a monster of so frightful mien, As to be hated needs but to be seen; Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face, We first endure, then pity, then embrace.”