A macro look into Daniel Murphy’s bigoted belief system

Mets second baseman Daniel Murphy would like you to know he is better than homosexuals. Here is what he said regarding former MLB player Billy Bean, a gay man:

Murphy, a devout Christian, said he would embrace Bean despite a divergence in their beliefs.

“I disagree with his lifestyle,” Murphy said. “I do disagree with the fact that Billy is a homosexual. That doesn’t mean I can’t still invest in him and get to know him. I don’t think the fact that someone is a homosexual should completely shut the door on investing in them in a relational aspect. Getting to know him. That, I would say, you can still accept them but I do disagree with the lifestyle, 100 percent.”

That’s very big of you, Daniel. Thanks for that.

His entire response is one giant contradiction in itself. Murphy “disagrees” with Bean’s lifestyle, but it “doesn’t mean [he] can’t still invest in him and get to know him.”

No shit, Murph Dawg.

Isn’t the entire concept of acceptance sort of, I don’t know, contingent on not disagreeing with one of the fundamental aspects of a given person? “Not disagreeing” is such a poor way for me to put it… it is more Daniel Murphy’s oblivious implication that other people should live their lives to appease he and other bigots like him that doesn’t sit right with me.

Imagine what kind of world this would be if everyone operated with that same, tragically insulated, outlook. It would be a sad, sad world. I mean, I disagree with people who like Incubus — because I think Incubus is a really shitty band — but am I passing moral judgement on those people? Of course not. I disagree with people who eat watermelon, because watermelon are disgusting, but does taste in fruit change the way I view someone as a human being? You should be picking up what I’m laying down at this point.

Daniel Murphy is not talking about Bean specifically with his Christian Right superiority complex, he is simply saying what he feels:

I don’t like homosexuals. 

That’s all he’s saying.

It must be nice to be so awesome at life that you can trash not only an entire faction of baseball fans — yes, believe it or not, gay people do like baseball — but of players in the closet, right now, in MLB clubhouses. It’s this dinosaur worldview that keeps athletes and their sexual orientations hidden in the first place, and Murphy is just one of many that thinks this way.

Last year, former Tigers outfielder Torii Hunter, a bigot himself, said he wouldn’t feel comfortable having a gay teammate. The irony with Hunter is, he’s black. It was only, like, 50 years ago that an entire race of Americans were drinking water from separate fountains, being denied service in restaurants, and sitting on the backs of busses. Torii’s shortsightedness was comical, but that’s drowned out by just how depressing it is that this anti-intellectual groupthink is still omnipresent.

A straight person might concede they don’t really have a dog in this fight. It’s not really our problem. But it is a problem, and not nearly enough attention is being paid to these hate speeches. Daniel Murphy deserves to be shamed for his comments.

There’s this former hip-hop artist who went by Benefit — the most gifted emcee you’ve never heard of — who had a line on this song “Behold” that went:

Living in the age of wisdom but surrounded by the dead

That’s just a random line I haven’t thought about in a while, but it applies. The brilliant thing about the modern era is how much information we have at our disposals. I know I say it all the time, but information is literally out there for the taking whenever you want it. You could know anything, figure out how to do anything. The modern era we live in is an advanced one, and it’s advancing more and more rapidly every year.

The dead are the Daniel Murphys and Torii Hunters of the world. The racists, the bigots. By themselves they aren’t dangerous, but they aren’t. And that’s the scary thing. There are millions of Americans like this, an entire region of the country that’s like this. How old am I going to have to be before this stops?

Is it ever going to stop?