As LifeNews reported yesterday, Baltimore Ravens offensive lineman Matt Birk is pro-life — so when it came time for the Ravens to visit President Barack Obama for the annual congratulations to the Super Bowl winners, he decided not to go.
Today the media watchdog web site Newsbusters confirms the Washington Post, which frequently covered Maryland sports-related news stories, skipped covering Birk’s boycott.
Baltimore Ravens starting center Matt Birk skipped the White House reception for the Super Bowl champs on Wednesday due to his pro-life beliefs, taking special exception to President Obama’s recent prayer “God bless Planned Parenthood.”
But The Washington Post didn’t find that worth reporting. Instead, in Friday’s paper, the Post’s “Reliable Source” gossip column celebrated former Ravens player Brendan Ayanbadejo, a heterosexual liberal who held a press conference announcing he would be guest editor of an August edition of the gay newspaper The Washington Blade.
This bias is nothing new: Ayanbadejo’s pro-gay activism has appeared very prominently in the Post in the last year, including in the front-page story on NBA player Jason Collins coming out of the closet, and a March 20 Style section front-pager on his “anti-bullying” work. Here’s a snippet of their profile of the “celebvocate” and his appearance:
How he looked: Casual Friday, NFL-style — lightweight blazer over black V-neck, patterned slip-on shoes, bright blue pants (“my LGBT pants”).
What he’s got planned: Too soon to say — their work on the special Aug. 30 issue is just getting started. While Naff said he’d love to have some athlete coming-out announcements, a la Jason Collins, Ayanbadejo said he won’t be lobbying any friends to take the leap. “It’s up to them to come out on their own terms.”
Soundbite: Ayanbadejo decried the notion of “the government telling us who we could love,” explained that supports gay marriage out of solidarity — as the product of an interracial marriage that would have been banned in many states just a decade before his birth. “My dad’s the blackest black you’ll ever see, my mom’s the whitest white you’ll ever see, and I came out this beautiful caramel complexion.”
All in all, Ayanbadejo the activist has been mentioned in nine Post stories, but Birk was mentioned in only one, an October 5, 2012 story on page B6, starting with paragraph 25:
But same-sex marriage opponents enlisted their own brawny advocate in Ravens center Matt Birk, who is cutting a video explaining his support for heterosexual marriage.
Birk, a Roman Catholic father of six, has also been active on the issue in Minnesota, where he grew up. Minnesota voters will be asked next month whether to write a same-sex marriage ban into the state constitution.
Birk is also one of those rare NFLers who attended Harvard (like Titans quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick). Birk graduated in 1998 with a degree in economics.
The Baltimore Sun and the NFL website reported on Birk’s protest move. The Post apparently thinks conservative protest is a concept that does not compute.
“I wasn’t there,” Birk told The Power Trip. “I would say this, I would say that I have great respect for the office of the Presidency but about five or six weeks ago, our president made a comment in a speech and he said, ‘God bless Planned Parenthood.’”
Birk, who also took a public stance during the recent gay rights movements that swung through our country last year, is a very open and public Catholic and claims that he took offense to these comments that were made by President Obama. So much so, that he declined a once in a lifetime opportunity to meet and be honored by the President at the White House.
“Planned Parenthood performs about 330,000 abortions a year,” Birk explained. “I am Catholic, I am active in the Pro-Life movement and I just felt like I couldn’t deal with that. I couldn’t endorse that in any way.”
Planned Parenthood is one of the nations leading sexual and reproductive health care providers. Their stances on birth control, abortion and the morning after pill have often pinned the in a head on clash with many Catholic and Conservative Christian groups across the nation.
“I’m very confused by [the President’s] statement,” Birk questioned. “For God to bless a place where they’re ending 330,000 lives a year? I just chose not to attend.”
closed.Birk was a featured speaker at the Maryland March for Life previously and he said his Catholic faith and being a father are two of the big reasons he is pro-life and he shared how he was overwhelmed to hold his first child.
