Reggie White, Minister of Intolerance

I've received complaints about my 1998 article on Reggie White. At the time I was critical of the way he used his religion to bash gays, church/state separation, and more. It seems that now that he is dead, we should whitewash history and pretend that he never said anything vile. Well, I won't do it.

Wayne Besen writes for The New York Blade:

After his death, we heard a lot about how he helped inner-city youth, but how many young lives did he potentially destroy with his forceful condemnations of homosexuality? To listen to the cooing media, you would think that these gay youth were expendable in White’s war against homosexuals. And make no mistake, White was as homophobic as they come.

“Gay activists are trying to force their agenda on our children and society, and it bothers me,” White said in an interview with Citizen Magazine. “When you look at the gay agenda, their thing is that they deserve the same rights as other minorities, particularly black people. That is very offensive.”

When asked why he picked gay bashing as his personal crusade, White compared homosexuality to unflattering behaviors. “You don’t have men and women who commit adultery who are activists for adultery, or liars who are activists for lying,” White told Citizen.

In an infamous speech to the Wisconsin State Legislature, White proclaimed that Asians can turn a TV into a watch, blacks excel at celebration and dance, Latinos can fit 20 or 30 people into one house, and whites are great with money. White can also be attributed with helping accelerate the trend of tying sports performance to fundamentalist religious belief. Now we can’t turn on the TV without some egocentric millionaire jock giving God credit for his touchdown.

Evidently Reggie White started to change as he grew older — he even stopped going to church four years ago. Unfortunately his transformation didn't occur fast enough for him to publicly retract the many awful things he said in the past. Thus, the damage he did remains unchanged — and that, if nothing else, is sufficient reason to continue keeping around all the quotes and critiques of his past ideas.

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