"Commander" Butker

The KC Chiefs kicker made a speech that would make Gilead proud.

Commencement speeches should be encouraging, challenging, and should lead graduates to reflect.

They should not make graduates feel they have wasted their time pursuing a degree and shouldn’t validate one life choice over other potential choices.

But professional football kicker Harrison Butker doesn’t know these facts.

His speech at Benedictine College, a Catholic school in Atchison, Kansas sounded like a 1950’s graduation speech than one given in 2024.

Butler’s speech covered the right-wing gamut from criticizing Biden’s COVID response:

"While COVID might have played a large role throughout your formative years, it is not unique. The bad policies and poor leadership have negatively impacted major life issues. Things like abortion, IVF, surrogacy, euthanasia, as well as a growing support for the degenerate cultural values and media all stem from pervasiveness of disorder.”

to encouraging toxic masculinity:

"To the gentlemen here today, part of what plagues society is this lie that has been told to you that men are not necessary in the home or in our communities.' As men, we set the tone of the culture, and when that is absent, disorder, dysfunction and chaos set in. This absence of men in the home is what plays a large role in the violence we see all around the nation. Be unapologetic in your masculinity. Fight against the cultural emasculation of men. Do hard things. Never settle for what is easy."

And attacking Pride Month:

“Not the deadly sins sort of Pride that has an entire month dedicated to it, but the true God-centered pride that is cooperating with the holy ghost to glorify him.”

Butker’s main focus seemed to provide the female encouragement one would find in the Handmaid’s Tale.

He said to the graduating women:

“It is you, the women, who have had the most diabolic lies told to you. Some of you may go on to lead successful careers in the world but I would venture to guess that the majority of you are most excited about your marriage and the children you will bring into this world.

I can tell you that my beautiful wife, Isabelle, would be the first to say that her life truly started when she began living her vocation as a wife and a mother, I’m on this stage, and able to be the man I am, because I have a wife who leans into her vocation.”

I’m beyond blessed with the many talents god has given me, but it cannot be overstated that all of my success is made possible because a girl I met in band class back in middle school would convert to the faith, become my wife, and embrace one of the most important titles of all: homemaker."

According to Butker, those female graduates wasted their time getting an education because they should have been spending their time sharpening their child-rearing, house cleaning, cooking and sewing skills.

If a woman graduates from college, gets married and stays at home, that’s her choice.

If a woman leaves the workforce for to stay at home and have and raise children, that’s her prerogative.

If a woman decides that she wants to find a man that will marry her so she can be a stay-at-home wife and mother, God bless her (He’d better bless her).

Butker’s rhetoric ignores the fact that some women don’t want to be a homemaker, don’t want children, and don’t want to be married.

He doesn’t account for career minded women who will marry or partner with other women, who won’t live out his Eisenhower-era lifestyle.

Of course, the same conservative pundits who wanted Colin Kaepernick cancelled, who told Lebron James to shut up and dribble are fully in support of Butker’s remarks.

Butker doesn’t need to be cancelled.

He’s entitled to his opinion.

If his wife meets him at the door with a pipe, smoking jacket, and a pair of slippers, more power to them.

But the world in 2024 is different than it was in 1954, when the only people that reaped any benefits were White men.

We live in a different world, some of it for the worse, but some of it definitely for the better.

And for better or worse, Harrison Butker’s dream world is never coming back.