The Kansas City Chiefs’ star kicker continues to be quizzed by sections of the US media over comments he made earlier this year during a May commencement speech in which he discussed young women weighing up the value of motherhood versus pursuing a career, and which garnered significant controversy at the time among mainstream media. <br><br>Harrison Butker has become of the US’s most famous Catholic sportspersons, with far more on his young shoulders than having to take crucial field goals for his team – with his devout Catholicism partly to blame, so to speak.
At a recent press conference during Butker's summer training camp – in the US it is currently the National Football League's off season – various journalists chose not to discuss sport-related matters and instead focused on the commencement speech Butker made at the small Catholic college in May. They also echoed previous media suggestions – most of which were wildly inaccurate – that Butker had pigeonholed women as needing to stay at home to cook and look after the children.
<strong>RELATED: <a href="https://catholicherald.co.uk/very-odd-the-way-in-which-mainstream-media-reported-on-last-supper-parody-at-olympics/?swcfpc=1"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">Very odd: The way mainstream media ‘reported’ on Last Supper parody at Olympics</mark></a></strong><br><br>“I’ve appreciated all the feedback,” Butker says. “With it being the off season and stating a lot of these things, I was really curious as to what people would be saying back to me. I’ve respected all the view points but in terms of what I said, I prayed about it and I thought about it, and I was very intentional with what I said. I stand behind what I said.”
He adds: “I was coming from a place of love and not trying to attack people or put people down. I only want the best for people. And that is what I was trying to say there, and I think the people that were in the gymnasium [where the commencement speech tool place] all understood what I was saying.
“My whole career I’ve talked about how I’m a husband and I’m a father before it comes to me as a kicker; something I’ve always preached. But then when I use that to talk about women [and] I say that they should embrace and love being wives and being mothers over their career – I think then it gets construed that I am trying to put women down which I am not at all.
“I love women. I love my wife. It comes from a place of love."
Butker goes on to describe how his wife attended the commencement speech and that it was the first time she had seen him make a public address. During the speech, he explains, he could make out his wife in the background.
“I was getting emotional looking at her crying and understanding that she has sacrificed so much for me, she has completely changed her life around and she has made sure she has focused on being the ultimate wife and the ultimate mother, and I love her so much for that," Butker tells the press conference.
"And I see how happy and excited she is day to day, to wake up and embrace that life."
He goes on to say: "She pushes me to be a better husband and a better father and to focus on my three children and focus on her over maybe trying to be the best kicker I can be out there on the field."
Butker recently also spoke out about the Last Supper parody that occurred during the opening ceremony of the Olympics. On the social media platform <em>X</em> he quoted Galatians 6:7-8 in a post that also featured a clip of the offending moment:
“Be not deceived, God is not mocked. For what things a man shall sow, those also shall he reap. For he that soweth in his flesh, of the flesh also shall reap corruption. But he that soweth in the spirit, of the spirit shall reap life everlasting.”<br><br><strong>RELATED: <a href="https://catholicherald.co.uk/god-is-not-mocked-harrison-butker-weighs-in-on-last-supper-controversy-at-olympics-ceremony/?swcfpc=1"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">‘God is not mocked’: Harrison Butker weighs in on Last Supper controversy at Olympics</mark></a></strong><br><br>These latest comments on motherhood from Butker follow the same issue having inadvertently risen to prominence all of a sudden in the US presidential election campaign, with the Republican's vice presidential nominee, JD Vance, coming in for criticism over previous comments he made in 2021 about Kamala Harris not having any biological children (she has two step children through her husband's previous marriage).
In an interview from 2021, Donald Trump’s recently-nominated running mate tells former Fox News host Tucker Carlson that the US is, in effect, run by “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too". <br><br>He adds, after mentioning Harris and a number of other prominent Democratic politicians who haven't had children, "the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children. And how does it make any sense that we have turned our country over to people who don't really have a direct stake in it." <br><br>Free of the ever more combative arena that is US politics, Butker tries to offer a much less abrasive and more thoughtful take on important, sensitive issues about which many people often have strongly differing opinions.
But that still doesn't seem good enough for much of the media, who remain doggedly in pursuit of his Catholic ideas, while appearing to dictate what can and what can't be said. <br><br><strong>RELATED: <a href="https://catholicherald.co.uk/heres-to-harrison-butker-a-winner-with-the-guts-to-tell-the-truth/"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">Here’s to Harrison Butker, a winner with the guts to tell the truth</mark></a></strong>
<em>Photo: Harrison Butker speaking during the training camp press conference; screenshot from video footage of press conference. </em>
