Count this as being among the many comedy bits that were ahead of their time… and could never be made today.
VOLUNTEER: You’re checked in. Here’s your AIDS ribbon.
KRAMER: Ah, no thanks.
VOLUNTEER: You don’t want to wear an AIDS ribbon?
KRAMER: No, no.
VOLUNTEER: But you have to wear an AIDS ribbon.
KRAMER: I have to?
VOLUNTEER: Yes.
KRAMER: Yeah, see, that’s why I don’t want to.
VOLUNTEER: But everyone wears the ribbon. You must wear the ribbon!
You must wear the ribbon!
Five Tampa Bay Rays players opted out of wearing LGBTQ Pride-themed uniforms during the team’s annual Pride Night event.
In honor of Pride Month, which is celebrated during the month of June to show support for the LGBTQ community, the Florida-based Major League Baseball team added rainbow accents to its official uniforms for its Saturday game against the Chicago White Sox.
But five players, all pitchers — Jason Adam, Jalen Beeks, Brooks Raley, Jeffrey Springs and Ryan Thompson — declined to wear the Pride-themed jerseys, citing religious beliefs.
That’s NBC News, along with other media outlets, targeting and harassing players for… not wearing the ribbon.
Cyd Zeigler, founder of LGBTQ sports site Outsports, denounced the players’ decision to not wear the Pride-themed jerseys and slammed the Rays management.
“People are misrepresenting what listening to management about what putting a rainbow flag on your uniform means,” he said. “It doesn’t mean you endorse sex between men. It just means everyone is welcome at the ballpark.”
You don’t need to wear anything to welcome everyone. You have to be forced to comply because that is the point.
Zeigler added, “It would have been so much better if no one had worn the rainbow stuff than if only a few people had.”
The point is to force everyone to do it.
Rays Players Undercut Pride Night By Not Wearing Rainbow logos – New York Times
By allowing the players to opt out of the promotion — and to use the platform to endorse an opposite viewpoint — the Rays undercut the message of inclusion they were trying to send.
You can’t have “inclusion” unless you exclude those who don’t conform.
Last month, the Rays joined with the Yankees to devote their social media feeds for one game entirely to facts about gun violence in the United States, rather than any information about the game. The Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, was already planning to veto $35 million in state funds to help the Rays build a new training center, but used the occasion to take a jab at the team.
“Companies are free to engage or not engage in whatever discourse they want, but clearly it’s inappropriate to be doing tax dollars for professional sports stadiums,” DeSantis said at a news conference last Friday. “It’s also inappropriate to subsidize political activism of a private corporation.”
Florida gets to opt out of the mandatory inclusion.
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