The NFL salute to Monday's Pride Day features a video supporting Las Vegas Raiders defensive end Carl Nassib's coming out as the first openly gay active player, a move conservative author Dinesh D'Souza says shows the NFL is "woke" and "political."
The timing of the outreach to the LGBTQ community should not be surprising, considering the NFL hired former Obama administration aide Katie Hill as senior vice president of communications in May. Hill is married to a woman.
"Football is gay," the ad reads. "Football is lesbian. Football is beautiful. Football is queer. Football is life. Football is exciting. Football is culture. Football is transgender. Football is heart. Football is power. Football is tough. Football is bisexual. Football is strong. Football is freedom. Football is American. Football is accepting.
"Football is for everyone," the ad concludes.
"I am proud of the clear message this spot sends to the NFL's LGBTQ+ fans: This game is unquestionably for you," NFL diversity director Sam Rapoport told Outsports. "I will be playing its first line over and over in my head all season."
The last quip was trolled by activists, however, as tweeters asked if the NFL was for Colin Kaepernick. At the end of his fledgling career, Kaepernick sat for the national anthem and ultimately started a worldwide athlete activists kneeling campaign to protest social injustice.
Black Lives Matter supporters and liberal activists have since claimed Kaepernick's speaking up for social issues and against police brutality ultimately led to him being ostracized from the NFL.
Still, D'Souza denounced the NFL's "woke" outreach.
"The NFL has gone full political," his Rumble post of the ad read at the bottom. "It's time to turn it off."
The LGBTQ community is not a monolith for liberal activism, however. Notably, Nassib is a registered Republican voter, according Brigitte Gabriel, a conservative Twitter voice.
The ad does support the Trevor Project, a charity to prevent LGBTQ youth suicide, along with Nassib.
"LGBTQ+ youth with at least one accepting adult have 40% lower risk of attempting suicide," the ad's ending message reads.
Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk noted the expression of freedom of sexuality was a lot more popular than the expression in the freedom of choice on vaccination, tweeting.
"An NFL player coming out as gay is fawned over by the media as 'courageous' and 'brave.' But an NFL player coming out against mandatory vaccines and tyrannical, unscientific league rules is attacked by the media as 'repugnant' and 'dangerous.' Do you see the problem here?"
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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