Is Major League Baseball ready to welcome an openly gay player to its league? It's a question that the New York Daily News posed back in 2013, a short time after NBA player Jason Collins revealed that he's gay in a Sports Illustrated article. At the time, Billy Bean—a former MLB player who came out in 2003—said that he felt the league might be a little too "conservative" to embrace a gay player. And yesterday, he played an indirect role in proving that that might still be true.
Bean, who was named MLB's Ambassador for Inclusion last summer, was invited to Mets' spring training yesterday in order to work out with the team. So after practice, Mets infielder Daniel Murphy was asked if he'd be open to playing alongside a gay player. And while he said that he would accept a gay teammate, he also mentioned that he wouldn't agree with his teammate's gay "lifestyle."
"I disagree with the lifestyle," he 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."
Murphy, a devout Christian, was then asked his opinion on homosexuality as a whole. And he expounded on it, while reiterating that he doesn't agree with the "lifestyle."
"We love the people," he said. "We disagree with the lifestyle. That's the way I would describe it for me. It's the same way that there are aspects of my life that I'm trying to surrender to Christ in my own life. There's a great deal of many things, like my pride. I just think that as a believer trying to articulate it in a way that says just because I disagree with the lifestyle doesn't mean I'm just never going to speak to Billy Bean every time he walks through the door. That's not love. That's not love at all."
For the second straight year, Murphy is now going to be back in the headlines in the spring. And once again, it's for all the wrong reasons.
[via NJ.com]
