(RNS) — Last week, a football player gave a commencement speech that made a lot of people pretty upset. I’m sure you’ve heard about it.
Commencement speeches are pretty minor skirmishes in the grand scheme of culture wars. All of the media punditry hair-pulling about these poor college students walking out on Jerry Seinfeld or missing their big graduation commencement speech strikes me as very stupid.
I do not remember a single word of my graduation commencement speech, nor do I remember who gave it. I asked my wife if she remembered who gave her commencement speech and she did, because it was Paul Ryan. I asked if she remembered what he said, and she did not, because she left in the middle to go get a hot dog.
But there’s been a weird pattern in these agro Christian guys’ “we must take back culture for cool tough men like me” speeches lately. I noted a few weeks ago that Mark Driscoll of all people was in the orbit of a good point in his own recent infamous speech, but his views on gender kept him from landing the plane. Something similar is happening with this football guy’s commencement speech.
He told the women in Benedictine College’s graduating class that, despite their newly minted and very expensive college degrees, while “some of you may go on to lead successful careers in the world,” he would “venture to guess that the majority of you are most excited about your marriage and the children you will bring into this world.”
He went on:
I can tell you that my beautiful wife Isabelle would be the first to say that her life truly started when she began living her vocation as a wife and as a mother. I’m on this stage today and able to be the man I am because I have a wife who leans into her vocation. I am beyond blessed with the many talents God has given me. But it cannot be overstated, that all of my success is made possible because the girl I met in class back in middle school would convert to the faith, become my wife and embrace one of the most important titles of all: homemaker.
We’ll have to take his word for it, since his beautiful wife Isabelle was not and will never be asked to share her thoughts on stage.
Look. This all might very well be true. Maybe Isabelle does love being a wife and a mom more than anything in the world. None of us know her, and I doubt any of us are in a place to speculate. Lots of people find raising a family to be all the personal fulfillment they need, and for all I know, Isabelle is one of those people. More power to her, if that’s true.
But what I do know is that this guy