Lance Berkman Believes Tolerance Is ‘Killing This Country’

Lance Berkman used to play baseball for the Houston Astros. You’ve probably heard of him. He was quite good at what he did. In fact, for awhile there in the early to mid-2000s, he was among the best in Major League Baseball. But this post isn’t about Lance Berkman, the formerly wildly talented ballplayer for the Astros. This post is about Lance Berkman, a man who believes tolerance is killing this country.

In an interview on KTRH 740 AM’s “The Michael Berry Show,” Berkman spoke of a recent ballot initiative concerning an equal-rights ordinance called HERO (more or less an anti-LGBT agenda). It was an initiative Berkman felt strongly about it, going as far as recording an ad for it.

“Vote no on Proposition One. No men in women’s bathrooms. No boys in girls’ showers or locker rooms. I’m Lance Berkman. I played professional baseball for 15 years, but my family is more important. My wife and I have four daughters. Proposition One, the ‘bathroom ordinance,’ would allow troubled men to enter women’s public bathrooms, showers and locker rooms. This would violate their privacy and put them in harm’s way. That’s just wrong. We must prevent this potential danger by closing women’s restrooms to men rather than waiting for a crime to happen. Under Proposition One, if restaurants, businesses and sports facilities don’t allow a man into a woman’s restroom, they would be subject to penalties and fines. This proposed ordinance says that it will stop discrimination, but in reality, it discriminates against people who believe, like me, that members of the opposite sex should not be forced to share restrooms or locker rooms. Join me to stop the violation of women’s privacy and discrimination against women. Vote no on Proposition One – no men in women’s bathrooms, no boys in girls’ showers or locker rooms.”

Berkman received backlash from the ad, most notably from Houston Mayor Annise Parker who attacked him on Twitter.

All of this led to the aforementioned interview on “The Michael Berry Show” in which Berkman went on some strange tangent about “tolerance” leading you “down a slippery slope.”

Boo tolerance!

The root of some of the problems we see now in society is that people haven’t taken those chances… and they haven’t put themselves on the line for what they believe in strongly, and if you don’t do that, the other side will always win.

To me, tolerance is the virtue that’s killing this country. We’re tolerant of everything. You know, everything is okay, and as long as you want to do it, and as long as it feels good to you, then it’s perfectly acceptable do it. Those are the kinds of things that lead you down a slippery slope, and you’ll get in trouble in a hurry.

The interview in its entirety below.

(Via Deadspin)