Devout Catholic, pro-lifer, and kicker for the Kansas City Chiefs, Harrison Butker, delivered a commencement speech for the Benedictine College graduating class of 2024, which has been a recent highlight for controversy.
Butker begins his speech benevolently, acknowledging the hardships that college graduating classes in 2024 experienced regarding the COVID-19 pandemic interrupting their schooling in previous years. Butker briefly pays homage to his Catholic beliefs considering he is speaking at a Private Catholic University. However, Butker’s address quickly takes a sharp turn, where instead of uplifting the accomplishments of the graduating students, he denounces what he believes to be the current hardships in America. He defamates President Joe Biden for “his support of the murder of innocent babies.” Of course, that is regarding abortion. His subsequent claim is that Catholic beliefs are counter-cultural and that Catholics are a minority group that faces immense discrimination in progressive American society. Butker states, “Congress just passed a bill where stating something as basic as the biblical teaching of who killed Jesus could land you in jail.” However, his claim is misinterpreted. The bill Butker mentioned being the The AntiSemitism Awareness Act is an act which aims to “increase awareness and understanding of antisemitism, including its threat to America, and improve safety and security for Jewish communities.” Contrary to Butker’s description, the newly passed bill does not include any criminal penalties.
After Butker misinterpretation of the AntiSemitism Bill, he talks about Catholicism for a while; however, what he said after that has caused great turmoil and controversy online. He switches his speech from defeating governmental figures and bills and expressing his catholic beliefs to narrowing his intended audience to just women. Butker doesn’t congratulate the 50.9% of the graduating class which are women for their outstanding accomplishments in acquiring their degrees after many years of schooling. Instead, he goes on a long tangent regarding his ideals for gender roles. He assumes that while most of the women in the audience had worked years for their degrees, which would most likely lead them to successful careers- those women will be most excited to become a wife and mother. He then expresses a personal anecdote of his own, mentioning his wife Isabelle, who converted to Catholicism after meeting Harrison and took on what he calls one of the “most important titles of all: (for women) homemaker.” He briefly mentions how birth control is a sin, and then redirects his speech to the males in the audience. He states, “As men, we set the tone of the culture, and when that is absent, disorder, dysfunction, and chaos set in. This absence of men in the home is what plays a large role in the violence we see all around the nation. Other countries do not have nearly the same absentee father rates as we find here in the U.S., and a correlation could be made in their drastically lower violence rates, as well.” This is an odd statement, considering that 80.4% of violent crimes are committed by men and that the United States ranks 49.2/100 (lower scores indicating lower violence rates) on the Crime Index scale, which isn’t the greatest score, but certainly not the worst with 58 other countries ranking higher.
Harrison Butker is just one of many who have become rejects of modernity and social inclusivity as a fearful response to increased diversity and wokeism against traditional values. Such traditionalists are scared of change and want to keep intact with their traditional values; however, they fail to see (or disagree) that an inclusive, diverse, and accepting world does not eradicate traditional values. The United States has many different types of people and cultures, which is a partial reason why the country is so strong. With no official language and no official religion, any kind of person can live in America. Acknowledging the importance of acceptance, equality, diversity, and inclusivity is recognizing a sense of place for everyone, including those who believe in traditional values and those who don’t. While Harrison Butker’s speech addressed his values of gender and societal roles as a response to his traditionalist fear of ‘wokeism,’ he doesn’t acknowledge that choice is (arguably) the most critical aspect of a prosperous society/nation. He mentions abortion as a sin and defames Joe Biden for his support of the pro-choice movement, but he doesn’t acknowledge that ‘pro-choice’ means the choice and the access to have an abortion. It doesn’t mean that every American woman must get an abortion, and it isn’t some means of “killing babies,” but instead, it allows women to have access to a form of advanced contraceptive healthcare and control over their own bodies. Women who are more religious/ traditional can simply not get an abortion, because it is their choice. The same idea goes for Butker’s perception of gender roles; it is a choice for women to choose whether they want to comply with traditionalism or whether they want to get a college degree; yet since Butker made those claims in his commencement speech to women who just happened to be graduating with their degrees, it’s clear that his speech weren’t with kind or fair intentions.
