Harrison Butker Defends Benedictine Commencement Speech

Months after his Benedictine College commencement speech made headlines, Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Harrison Butker stands by what he said.

“I’ve been in the league for seven years now, and I have a platform. So with that comes people who want me to say what I think is very important,” Butker said Wednesday during a Media appearance At the chiefs training camp.

In a May speech at Benedictine, a private Catholic liberal arts school in Atchison, Kansas, Butker said women with degrees were more likely to get married and have children, criticized President Joe Biden for his stance on abortion and his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, and attacked Catholic leaders who he said were “pushing dangerous sexist ideologies to America’s youth.”

Critics were quick to rally against Butker, including the Los Angeles Chargers and Serena Williams.

“I was very deliberate in what I said, and I stand behind what I said,” Butker, 29, said Wednesday.

He added that he believed “everyone who was in that gym understood what I was saying.”

He said it “comes from a place of love” and not “a place to try to attack or insult people.”

“I look at the offseason as a short period, maybe five months, where I can represent myself as Harrison Butker, as a faithful Catholic,” he said. “And obviously when the offseason comes around, I try to focus as much as possible on football and not get distracted from the Chiefs.”

Days after his speech, Butker said he had no regrets.

“As expected, the more I spoke about what I value most of all — my Catholic faith — the more polarizing it became. It was a decision I made consciously and I have no regrets at all,” Butker said in a speech at a ceremony in Nashville, Tennessee, in May.

In his comments Wednesday, Butker noted the closeness between the team’s leaders despite their differences.

“You have a bunch of different personalities, a bunch of different backgrounds, and we’re all there together trying to understand each other and realise that at the end of the day we have one goal together, which is to win football matches,” he said.

Butker nodded to teammates Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelcewho at the time defended his character even as they admitted they disagreed with the sentiment of his comments.

He said he was “always encouraged by people who speak their minds and are so bold in what they believe in” and that’s what inspired him to say what he said.

“I just decided, you know, there are things that I believe in with all my heart that I think will make this world a better place, and I’m going to preach that, and if people don’t agree, they don’t agree, but I’m going to continue to say what I think is right and love everybody along the way,” he added.