I’m Not Wearing Your Damn Jersey

As I’ve written — and argued on my podcast, too — I have no problem whatsoever with Ivan Provorov quietly opting out of the NHL’s Pride celebration on the grounds that he wishes to stay true to his religion. In my view, his doing so does not represent a rejection of “diversity”; it is diversity. The point of hockey is . . . well, hockey, and in a meritocratic system in which the primary criterion for eligibility is whether or not a given individual is good enough at hockey, it is inevitable that we will be treated to a collection of players who are profoundly different from one another in every way other than their ability to play hockey. Unless one of those players starts berating the others during games, tries to prevent anyone from taking part in the sport, or actively interferes with the proceedings in any other way, those differences shouldn’t matter. In fact, if we really believe that “diversity is our strength,” they should be considered a net positive.

But the thing is: While religious objections are fine — this country is, in part, built to accommodate religious objections — one doesn’t actually need to have a faith-based objection to the Pride movement in order to have a serious problem with being asked to wear a Pride jersey at a sporting event. I have no religious beliefs, and I am in favor of gay marriage. But I wouldn’t want to wear a Pride jersey because, although I agree with some of the movement’s aims, I consider most of its key players to be institutionally illiberal.

This aversion is not limited to Pride. Frankly, I don’t like any political or social movement enough to wear its jersey in public. By disposition, I’m not much of a joiner — in no small part because even when I agree with a lot of what a given outfit has to say, I invariably have profound problems with the rest of the baggage that goes along with it.

One of the greatest tricks that professional advocates have pulled in recent years is to pretend that their organization represents the pure distillation of a given cause — gay rights, black equality, free speech, conservatism, whatever — and that if anyone opposes it for any reason, they must oppose those things per se. But that’s nonsense, isn’t it? Sometimes those groups say things I like, sometimes they don’t, but I’m no more going to endorse them in full by wearing their clothes than I’m going to pledge fealty to a given politician because I like his approach toward taxes. If I want to show blind loyalty to a given outfit, I’ll stick to following professional sports — which, now that I think of it, would be a good idea for the NHL, too.