Months after his commencement speech at Benedictine College made headlines, Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker is standing by what he said.
“I’ve been in the league now seven years, and I do have a platform. So with that comes people that want me to state what I believe to be very important,” Butker said Wednesday during a media appearance at the Chiefs’ training camp.
In his May speech at Benedictine, a private, Catholic liberal arts school in Atchison, Kansas, Butker said the women receiving their degrees were most likely more excited to get married and have children, slammed President Joe Biden for his stance on abortion and his handling of the Covid pandemic, and went after Catholic leaders who he said were “pushing dangerous gender ideologies onto the youth of America.”
Critics quickly rallied against Butker, including the Los Angeles Chargers and Serena Williams.
Butker, 29, said Wednesday that he was “very intentional with what I said, and I stand behind what I said.”
He added that he thinks “the people that were in that gymnasium all understood what I was saying.”
He said he was “coming from a place of love” and “not a place of trying to attack or put people down.”
“I kind of look at the offseason as a little bit of, you know, maybe five-month period where I can kind of just represent me as Harrison Butker, as a faithful Catholic,” he said. “And then obviously, when it gets to the season, I try to focus as much as I can on football and not being a distraction from the Chiefs.”
Days after he have the speech, Butker said he had no regrets.
“As to be expected, the more I’ve talked about what I value most — which is my Catholic faith — the more polarizing I’ve become. It’s a decision I’ve consciously made and one I do not regret at all,” Butker said in an address at a gala in Nashville, Tennessee, in May.
In Wednesday’s comments, Butker pointed to the closeness of the Chiefs despite their differences.
“You have a bunch of different personalities, bunch of different backgrounds, and we’re all there together trying to understand each other and realize that at the end of the day, we have one goal together, and that’s to win football” games, he said.
Butker nodded to teammates Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce, who at the time defended his character even while they acknowledged they did not agree with the sentiment of his comments.
He said that he has “always been encouraged by people that state their opinions and they’re very bold in what their beliefs are” and that that’s what inspired him to say what he did.
He added: “I’ve just decided, you know what, there’s things that I believe wholeheartedly that I think will make this world a better place, and I’m going to preach that, and if people don’t agree, they don’t agree, but I’m going to continue to say what I believe to be true and love everyone along the way.”
