Conservative talk show host Lars Larson and Breitbart columnist C. Edmund Wright added their voices last week to right-wing outrage over NFL recruit Michael Sam’s televised kiss with his boyfriend, linking the kiss to supposed anti-Christian persecution in America.
Suggesting that all Christians are hostile to gay rights and gay people, Wright said he “doubts” Christians who work for ESPN “share all of this celebration that’s going on throughout the media and their employer.”
Larson, for his part, compared media coverage of Sam’s kiss to laws making it a capital crime to insult Mohammed: “You know what I compare it to, if you go to certain countries on this planet and you say a harsh word about Mohammad, the penalty is death. In America, if you say a harsh word about somebody who is homosexual, the idea is a public death or an economic death or a career death. So what’s the difference in that kind of thinking?”
Wright criticized ESPN anchors for “slobbering” over Sam, adding that it was “not necessarily a great moment for America.”
“They want to be celebrated and elevated and they want to quash anyone who dares not do that,” he said.
Reassuring his audience that he has “friends who are gay,” Larson claimed coverage of Sam’s kiss reveals the “ugly” side of “homosexual advocacy groups.”
