That description applies to his critics.
That description applies to his critics.
I van Provorov, a defenseman for the Philadelphia Flyers, has found himself in the unhappy position of being the latest sacrificial lamb in the cause of LGBT tolerance. On Tuesday, Provorov politely declined to join the hockey team’s “Pride Night” event, citing conflicts with his Christian faith:
“I respect everybody and I respect everybody’s choices. My choice is to stay true to myself and my religion.”
Flyers defenseman Ivan Provorov on refusing to wear a rainbow jersey for warm ups during “Pride Night” due to his Russian Orthodox faith.
pic.twitter.com/wCUl8slmRB— Greg Price (@greg_price11) January 18, 2023
The public revelation that some people still believe that Christianity is true — and worse, that they believe a version of it not uniformly consistent with the modern Democratic Party platform — has been the subject of an especially fiery backlash from progressive commentators. (One TV host mused that the NHL should “fine the Flyers a million dollars”; another suggested that Provorov should go fight on the front lines in Ukraine.) Caught in this crossfire was Flyers head coach John Tortorella, whose firm and repeated defenses of Provorov have invited their own progressive scrutiny. “He’s being true to himself and to his religion,” Tortorella said. “It’s one thing I respect about Provy, he’s always true to himself.” Tortorella also rejected any suggestion that he would consider benching Provorov:
You asked me if I was going to bench him. Why would I bench him? Because of a decision he’s making on his beliefs and his religion? It turned out to be a great night for Pride Night. Players were involved, the building was filled, there was awareness, everything. Provy didn’t actively seek out and try to make a stand against it. He just felt he didn’t want to take warmup. I respect him for his decision.
As progressives were quick to point out, Tortorella took a different line regarding the earlier controversy surrounding Colin Kaepernick’s decision to kneel for the national anthem: “If any of my players sit on the bench for the national anthem, they will sit there the rest of the game,” the Flyers coach told ESPN in 2016. As news outlets and left-wing pundits jumped on the alleged hypocrisy, Tortorella retracted his earlier comments, with the caveat that he was still personally uncomfortable with the prospect of players refusing to stand for the anthem. NBC Sports reported:
Colin Kaepernick, then the quarterback of the 49ers, had protested racial injustice by not standing while the national anthem was played prior to a preseason game.
Tortorella, then the head coach of the Blue Jackets, was asked how he would feel if a player of his took a seat during the anthem.
“I said the player would sit the rest of the game,” Tortorella said Thursday morning. “I was wrong. I learned a lot through that experience.
“My feelings towards any type of protest to the flag, during the anthem — it disgusts me. To this day, it disgusts me. It shouldn’t be done. Those are my feelings. I can’t push those feelings onto someone else.
“So I was wrong in saying that back then. Didn’t realize I was, but as I went through it all, it was, ‘Who am I to push my feelings onto someone else?’ Same situation here.”
Kudos to Tortorella for going out of his way to be as intellectually consistent as possible. But he shouldn’t need to retract anything about his stance on Kaepernick. (It’s worth pointing out that none of the progressive critics of Tortorella and Provorov are willing to extend them the same courtesy — many of the same left-wingers who are enraged by Provorov’s personal decision fiercely defended Kaepernick on free-speech grounds.) If you abstract this out to the level of cruising altitude, it looks like hypocrisy: “He said this guy should be benched for his personal decision; and he said this other guy shouldn’t!” But in the context of the actual facts of the case, such allegations are silly.
The national anthem is not, in fact, the same thing as a Pride Night event that sporting leagues cooked up for accolades from major LGBT groups five minutes ago. On the one hand, “the Flyers have hosted their pride night for the last few seasons,” CBS News reported. On the other, the tradition of standing for the Star-Spangled Banner predates Pride Night events by more than a century. USA Today tells the history:
[The] song was played at some baseball games in the 1890s, often with great pomp, Ferris says, but the World Series in 1918 offered a star-spangled moment. Babe Ruth’s Boston Red Sox opened in Chicago against the Cubs. The game came 17 months — and 100,000 American deaths — after the U.S. entered the war to end all wars. During the seventh-inning stretch, a military band spontaneously played the country’s still-unofficial anthem.
Red Sox third baseman Fred Thomas, on furlough from the Navy, saluted. Other players put hands over hearts. The crowd, already on their feet to stretch, began to sing along. The New York Times reported the song’s final bars were met by “thunderous applause and rent the air with a cheer that marked the highest point of the day’s enthusiasm.”
Of course, something having a “long tradition of existence” is not, in and of itself, an argument for its virtue. But on the level of basic principle, the anthem is a tradition that we should expect public figures to respect. It’s a celebration of the country we share — our history, our freedoms, and the men and women who sacrificed everything to protect them. Opposite this, the charities and activist groups that benefit from the new Pride Night tradition in sporting leagues often support much more radical causes than simple LGBT toleration. Multiple groups that support gender transitions for children, for example — which I detailed at length in a piece about Major League Baseball’s Pride Night fundraisers — are partners in the Flyers Pride Night that Provorov neglected to join.
The persecution of Provorov — and of numerous other professional athletes who refused to participate in the new tradition — only underscores that Pride Night is about something more than its stated mission of “gay acceptance.” Its practical purpose is not just to advocate for a pluralistic culture that tolerates gay Americans, but to elevate LGBT identity to the marker of a deified class beyond reproach and to delegitimize any who object. Provorov’s — and Tortorella’s — critics are quite candid in their belief that religious faith has no legitimate claim to the public square.