Syndicated: Kirsters Baish| Openly gay and anti-Trump soccer star Megan Rapinoe recently stated that she will “probably never sing the national anthem again.” During an interview with Yahoo Sports, the United States Women’s national soccer team co-captain explained that she won’t be taking part in the team’s displays of patriotism as a protest against President Donald Trump and his administration. She stated that because she is “as talented” as she is, she is able to use her platform to say “f-you” to those she does not agree with.
“I’ll probably never put my hand over my heart. I’ll probably never sing the national anthem again,” Rapinoe said, going on to say that she sees herself as “a walking protest when it comes to the Trump administration,” because of “everything I stand for.”
“I feel like it’s kind of defiance in and of itself to just be who I am and wear the jersey, and represent it,” she added. “Because I’m as talented as I am, I get to be here, you don’t get to tell me if I can be here or not. So it’s kind of a good ‘F you’ to any sort of inequality or bad sentiments that the [Trump] administration might have towards people who don’t look exactly like him. Which, God help us if we all looked like him. Scary. Really scary. Ahh, disturbing.”
Breitbart News explains:
This is not the first time Rapinoe has protested. She was also fond of taking a knee during the national anthem after former NFL player Colin Kaepernick began his protests.
The soccer player’s protest spurred the U.S. Soccer Federation to change its rules in 2017 and require players to stand for the national anthem, a rule that Rapinoe agreed to observe.
But, as Daily Wire notes, Rapinoe slammed the rule as “cowardly.”
“I know what it means to look at the flag and not have it protect all of your liberties,” she told Sports Illustrated at the time.
“Using this blanketed patriotism as a defense against what the protest actually is was pretty cowardly,” the soccer star said in 2017. “I think the NFL does it. I felt like the statement from U.S. Soccer, and then the rule they made without ever talking to me, that was the same as what the NFL was doing – just to not have the conversation, to try to just stop me from doing what I’m doing instead of at least having a conversation, and trying to figure out a [solution] that makes sense for everyone.”
Rapinoe told Yahoo Sports during the recent interview that she won’t likely be stopping her protest anytime soon.
“It would take a lot” to end the protest, Rapinoe explained. “It would take criminal justice reform. It would take the huge inequality gap that we have to be much better. It would take a lot of progress in LGBTQ rights. We just have such a disparity in this country in so many different ways, inequality in so many different ways.”
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