#pride night

Quispe López at Them:

Pennsylvania independent minor-league baseball team York Revolution forfeited a Pride Night game scheduled for June 18 because several of its players refused to wear the rainbow commemorative jerseys, per local ABC affiliate WHTM.

“This decision was not reached lightly,” a June 17 statement by the York Revolution reads. “Unfortunately, several of our players have refused to wear the scheduled Pride Night jersey and the club decided that hosting the event is more important than forcing players to wear jerseys they are not comfortable with and playing the game.”

The jerseys, which were especially designed for the Pride Night event, feature rainbow sleeves with the word “Pride’ written across the back of the baseball jersey.

Instead of playing the scheduled game against Southern Maryland, the 11th annual Pride Night game will be forfeited and the rest of the night’s programming will continue as scheduled. The team stated that they feel it is “the best way to stay consistent with our long-standing partnerships” with organizations like the Rainbow Rose Center, JLS Automation, among other supporters of the Revolution.

Daniel Villarreal (he/him) at LGBTQ Nation:

Vice President J.D. Vance wrote a social media message seemingly supporting an Major League Baseball player who wrote a Bible verse on their baseball cap during a June 12 Pride Night event at the Oracle Park ballpark in San Francisco, California. The image that Vance commented on showed San Francisco Giants starting pitcher Laden Roupp, who wrote Gen 9:11-16, a Bible verse about the rainbow, on his black cap bearing his team’s logo in rainbow colors. The verse, which follows God’s promise to never again flood the world for its sinful ways, says, “I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the Earth.”

Sports Illustrated (SI) posted the image of Roupp and noted that he was one of three Giants players who wrote Bible verses on their Pride caps as well as that the MLB had issued a warning to the players. In response to SI‘s post, Vance wrote, “Trump won we don’t have to do this anymore.”

It’s unclear what exactly Vance thinks “we don’t have to do” anymore: hold baseball team Pride Nights, write Bible verses on ballcaps, or warn MLB players who break the league’s uniform rules by altering their apparel (as the MLB did in this case).

It’s most likely that Vance meant that sports teams don’t have to hold Pride Nights or have players wear Pride-themed gear. The current presidential administration has largely sought to eliminate all LGBTQ+ recognition in its crusade to end all diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, as well as its ongoing empowerment of anti-LGBTQ+ Christian conservatives. Despite Vance’s vague assertion, 29 out of 30 MLB teams are holding Pride Night events this year, Outsports reported; the only team not doing so is the Texas Rangers.

[...] Fox News recently accused MLB of launching an “attack on faith”, with contributor Mary Katharine Ham saying, “It’s not tolerant, and by the way, support for LGBTQ causes has been going precipitously down because of this behavior. It used to be a live and let live argument, which is something most Americans were very friendly to, and then it became ‘Bake the cake and wear the hat, you bigot.'” While Ham is correct that public and corporate support for LGBTQ+ causes has declined somewhat recently, the decline is largely due to federal, state, and local Republican attacks against companies and organizations that have LGBTQ+ inclusive DEI policies as well as right-wing campaigns targeting any groups that ally with the LGBTQ+ community.

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/7358121/2026/06/13/sf-giants-pride-night-bible-verses-caps/?source=user_shared_article&unlocked_article_code=1.q1A.bi0m.CmfA-G-2IWYI

OBVIOUSLY josh hawley is not a serious person and to take seriously such obvious bad faith behavior is to put myself in an easily avoidable trap HOWEVER what the actual fuck these people are so fucking stupid and annoying

you are telling me that the league that has the largest percentage of publicly and vocally Christian player BY FAR (not a perfect study but compelling nonetheless) discriminates against those players bc it ALLOWED (and only made a statement AFTER) a small handful of those players to make homophobic statements on their mandated uniforms on a night specifically designed to bring gay fans who do not often feel welcome in sports into the ballpark. this league that has zero out queer players and has never had an out queer player? this is what you are saying? the “pattern of discrimination” you are concerned with is what is happening to the christian pitchers who went out of their way to take a homophobic stand on pride night? no doubt no doubt no doubt

not to mention that the policy that is being enforced states clearly that “a Player may not write, attach, affix, embroider or otherwise display nicknames or messages on apparel or playing equipment” which they knew about before the evening and chose to disobey anyways. and they aren’t facing any disciplinary action or fines simply a verbal warning. like simply you must be joking. the victim mentality of the american christian is so fucking unbelievable.

Mathew Rodriguez at Them:

When San Francisco Giants pitcher Landon Roupp took to the mound on Pride Night at the team’s home stadium on Friday, he had Bible verses from Genesis scribbled onto his hat. The verses, per NBC Sports Bay Area, were an apparent reference to the rainbow-colored Giants logo on the Pride cap: Genesis 9:12-16 tells the story of God’s covenant with Noah following the flooding of the world, which includes the Judeo-Christian mythology of the rainbow. The passage in the New International Version reads in part: “Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life. Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth.’” Roupp explained why he wrote the verse on his hat in a postgame interview. “It’s just about God’s covenant and a promise that he makes to us that, you know, his faithfulness and his mercy," the pitcher said said, per NBC Sports Bay Area. “That’s just kind of something I believe in, and I stand firm in that, and I’m thankful we live in a country where, you know, we have the freedom to believe what we want ... and express what we want." [...]

Multiple other Giants players wore Bible verses on their caps, as well, per The Athletic. Reliever JT Brubaker included a smaller section of the same verse, “Gen 9:13-15,” while Ryan Walker wore his on the side of his cap, per The McCovey Chronicles, a site dedicated to the San Francisco Giants. Brady Klopfer, a producer for The McCovery Chronicles, expressed his disappointment in the Giants’ stunt for the site and specifically called out Roupp for saying there’s “no hate” in his gesture. “Sure, no hate at all, Landen,” Klopfer wrote. “Just so much insecurity that he couldn’t wear a hat with a few colors on it without having to deface it. Big strong man scared of a little rainbow. The mind can hardly fathom such profound masculinity.” Klopfer wrote that he never remembered such a stunt happening at prior Pride Nights, further underscoring the cultural feeling that homophobia is so back during the second Trump administration. He called the night “bigoted and embarrassing.”