Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey (R) has sent a letter to Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas (D), demanding that he turn over all documents, records, and communications related to his office’s X post retaliating against Kansas City Chief’s kicker Harrison Butker for the faith-based comments he made during a commencement speech at a Catholic college over the weekend.
During his 20-minute address Saturday, the conservative Catholic kicker urged female graduates at Benedictine College to embrace their vocation as homemakers, blasted Joe Biden’s radical pro-abortion advocacy, and encouraged graduates to have Catholic pride— “not the deadly sin sort of pride that has an entire month dedicated to it.”
The speech was well-received by the audience, who gave him a hearty standing ovation, but many leftists across the country reacted with retaliatory outrage and attempts cancel him.
The NFL cravenly distanced itself from the speech, and espoused its “steadfast” “commitment to inclusion.”
“Harrison Butker gave a speech in his personal capacity,” Jonathan Beane, the league’s senior vice president and chief diversity and inclusion officer, said. “His views are not those of the NFL as an organization. The NFL is steadfast in our commitment to inclusion, which only makes our league stronger.”
At the height of the histrionic left-wing backlash against Butker, the official X account for the city of KCMO, wrote a bizarre and spiteful post saying, “Just a reminder, Harrison Butker lives in the city of _____.”
After the post was ratioed by appalled X-users, the Mayor’s office deleted its post, writing: “We apologies [sic] for our previous tweet. It was shared in error.”
Lucas addressed the issue in a separate post, calling it “clearly inappropriate.”
“A message appeared earlier this evening from a City public account. The message was clearly inappropriate for a public account. The City has correctly apologized for the error, will review account access, and ensure nothing like it is shared in the future from public channels.”
In a press release Friday, Bailey suggested that an internal review would not be enough.
“Missourians of faith deserve to know why Kansas City officials decided to attack Mr. Butker for his deeply held religious beliefs,” he said. “My office will not tolerate religious discrimination from City officials. I will enforce the Missouri Human Rights Act to ensure Missourians are not targeted for their free exercise of religion. The mayor needs to immediately turn over his office’s communications relating to this post.”
In his letter to Lucas, Bailey stressed that Butker is a private citizen who was speaking to a Catholic audience that “largely shares his views.”
“Your office’s X account publicly released residential location information on a private citizen, Harrison Butker, in an attempt to retaliate against him for expressing his sincerely held religious beliefs at a religious college’s commencement ceremony—to an audience that largely shares his views, ” Bailey wrote in his letter to Lucas.
“Use of government social media to retaliate against an individual based on their religious beliefs amounts to discriminatory behavior that is not tolerated under our Constitution or Missouri Statute,” he continued. “Our nation is founded on a bedrock commitment to the free exercise of religion. In addition, Missouri law specifically prohibits faith-based discrimination against Missouri residents. Yet, your office apparently believes it is appropriate to denigrate a devout Catholic for comments he made about his own faith at a religious college.”
Bailey also expressed concern that someone from the mayor’s office “misappropriated government resources and information to find Mr. Butker’s city of residence.”
“This was irresponsible at best and potentially a violation of Missouri law,” the AG warned.
Bailey concluded by stating, “Missourians deserve better from our elected leaders. Mr. Butker was well within his rights to discuss his religious views—views which are shared by millions of members of his faith tradition. Sadly, history is filled with examples of people of religious faith being targeted for their beliefs by government officials.”
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