In a column on Deadspin.com, former Minnesota Vikings punter Chris Kluwe on Jan. 2 admits that he doesn’t know if his activism for marriage equality was the reason the team’s ownership and coaches dismissed him.
“However, I’m pretty confident it was,” he said.
Kluwe gained notoriety in 2012 when he became an advocate for marriage equality in Minnesota and spoke out against a constitutional amendment which would have banned same-sex couples from getting married. That amendment was defeated and Minnesota now allowed marriage equality.
In the letter, Kluwe talks about how coaches would ask him to silence his support of marriage equality and how anti-gay slurs were used more often in front of him once he began his advocacy. At one point, he said coach Mike Priefer shared his “disgust” with the thought of two men kissing. He then directly attacked the gay community in the locker room, Kluwe shares.
“Mike Priefer, in one of the meanest voices I can ever recall hearing, said: ‘We should round up all the gays, send them to an island, and then nuke it until it glows,” Kluwe wrote. “The room grew intensely quiet and none of the players said a word for the rest of the meeting.”
The ongoing homophobia among the coaching staff, Kluwe concludes, contributed to his dismissal. He calls Priefer a bigot and says that Leslie Frazier and Rick Spielman, who are also coaches, cowards.
“Both knew I was a good punter and would remain a good punter for the foreseeable future,” Kluwe wrote, adding that both lacked the “fortitude to disagree with Mike Priefer on a touchy subject matter.”
Kluwe’s NFL future is uncertain, since he was released in the summer of 2013. However, he said he shared his story because he wants to make sure that Priefer never holds another coaching position in the NFL.
“It’s inexcusable that someone would use his status as a teacher and a role model to proselytize on behalf of his own doctrine of intolerance,” Kluwe wrote. “I hope he never gets another opportunity to pass his example along to anyone else. I also hope that Frazier and Spielman take a good look in the mirror and ask themselves if they are the people they truly profess themselves to be.”
