Cowering to the minority

Now I know Ricantotheright© is not a martial arts or sports blog, but I have to write about an incident in the MMA world that has me scratching my head. A talented fighter by the name of Matt Mitrione was suspended indefinitely by the UFC for making some very negative comments concerning a man who turned himself into a women who now wants to fight women. No this is not a belated April fools joke. Now I just want to say that the way Matt dressed down this man was a bit excessive. Matt could have  voiced his disagreement with what this fighter was doing in a more tactful way, but remember we are talking about a fighter not a Harvard law professor. The reason I want to take on this subject is due to the free speech issue that is clearly being trampled for political correctness sake. I hate, hate, hate political correctness. I believe it is one of the weakening factors of our way of life in the last twenty years.

A friend of mine pointed out that in professional sports contracts that there is a current trend to place these morality clauses into the agreement. If there was a clause of this type in Matt's contract than he or his agent are at fault for not fully understanding what they were signing. Now I can understand that professional sports have a brand image to protect, however, how many of us care what the guy entertaining us on the weekend has to say about anything? Why should a company be allowed to take away your constitutionally guarantee rights with the stroke of a pen? Which is stronger the Constitution or a contract, which should be? If you hang on the words of your favorite athletes your a fool. Pro sports figures have no place being held up as role models or heros. A cop, a fireman, your dad, those are the people we should be encouraging our young people to emulate and even those within reason.

In a society where Realism has been instituted this situation would have never occured. Both fighters would have their says and the league would state that their speech is protected by the constitution and that they are independent contractors who do not necessarily represent the opinions of the league. If an LGBT person is offended don't watch. How weak and small minded of a people we are becoming that we can't even take criticism or confrontation. We need to defend holsum speech and offensive speech. Once we begin to control one or the other we will lose both.