Thursday, January 24, 2013

Marriage Equality At The Super Bowl

My team is the Green bay Packers. Things were looking good for them to make another playoff run to the Super Bowl. However, a loss to the San Francisco 49ers in the divisional round put an end to that hope. There is always next year I suppose...

I have no particular love or hatred for either team that will be playing in this year's Super Bowl: the aforementioned 49ers and the Baltimore Ravens. Being a fan and watcher of the Super Bowl itself however, I need to find a tie so that I have a team to cheer for to make this game more interesting.

Enter Ravens linebacker Brendon Ayanbadejo.

Over the past year, Brendon has been an outspoken advocate for marriage equality. This was particularly pertinent given that the state of his football fan base, Maryland, had marriage equality on the ballot in this past November's election. Brendon put himself in the midst of that fight in a very public way. Luckily, his side was victorious and marriage is now the law in Maryland.

Within hours of the ravens defeating the New England Patriots in the AFC Championship, which got them their Super Bowl berth, Brendon was emailing marriage equality advocates about how to use the media surrounding the big game to advance equality for gay people*. Even with all of the work that he will have to put in over the next week and a half to prepare for the biggest game of his career thus far, he still intends to make time to deal with marriage equality, bullying, and homophobia in sports. There will be tons of media on him, his fellow teammates, and his opponents in the run-up to the Super Bowl, and Brendon plans on using his elevated platform to affect change in all of the right ways. One of his goals is to appear on Ellen DeGeneres' show with his message, and of course, a Super Bowl ring.

With all of that side, I am officially throwing my hat in with the Baltimore Ravens again (I was with them for the AFC championship against the New England Patriots but that was an apolitical decision, I just don't like the Patriots). Good luck to Brendon and the rest of the Baltimore Ravens.

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