Drew Brees, a New Orleans Saints quarterback who was criticized for promoting Christian students to participate in Bring Your Bible to School Day responded on Sep. 5 to the attacks and “a lot of negativity” as being “simply not true.”
Brees says that someone wrote an article with a “very negative headline” about him which led to an LGBTQ group criticizing him. The article apparently alleged that he was promoting a group that is anti-LGBTQ.
He says that he was only encouraging kids to bring their bibles to school and didn’t even mention any group in the video.
“In the video, is there any mention of any group outside of just talking about national ‘Bring Your Bible to School Day’? … No, there wasn’t,” said Brees said in an interview with ESPN. “It’s not written anywhere on it. I don’t say anything about it. The only thing I was promoting was encouraging kids to bring their bibles to school on national ‘Bring Your Bible to School Day,’ to live out your faith with confidence, and I gave my favorite bible verse.”
The national campaign “Bring Your Bible to School Day,” was initiated by Focus on the Family, a Christian conservative group which is also pro-life.
Brees said that he didn’t know that the campaign was connected to a group that was anti-gay, and found it unfair that the headline of at least one article read: “Drew Brees does video for anti-gay hate group.”
He tried to “set the record straight” with a self-recorded video, saying:
“I’d like to set the record straight,” Brees said video. “I live by two very simple Christian fundamentals, and that is: Love the Lord with all your heart, mind and soul, and love your neighbor as yourself. The first one is very self-explanatory. The second one, love your neighbor as yourself. What does that mean to me? It means love all, respect all, and accept all. So that is actually how I live my life. That is what I try to do with my family, with my teammates, with people in my community, with my friends, all people. No matter your race, your color, your religious preference, your sexual orientation, your political beliefs, it doesn’t matter. So the fact that these rumors have been spread about me are completely untrue,” he stated.
“I do not support any groups that discriminate or that have their own agendas that are trying to promote inequality. Hopefully, that has set the record straight and we can all move on, because that’s not what I stand for,” he said.
Hopefully this sets the record straight with who I am and what I stand for. Love, Respect, and Accept ALL. I encourage you not to believe the negativity you read that says differently. It’s simply not true. Have a great day. pic.twitter.com/4RdTahE7EZ
— Drew Brees (@drewbrees) September 5, 2019
