The legacy of punter Chris Kluwe, #5 of the Minnesota Vikings, may end up coming from a letter rather than a kick. The Vikings’ special teamer picked up Maryland lawmaker Emmett C. Burns’s challenge to Baltimore Raven Brendon Ayanbadejo’s First Amendment rights as if it were a fumbled free throw and ran it back for the equivalent of an inside-the-park home run.
“I find it inconceivable that you are an elected official of Maryland’s state government,” begins Kluwe’s missive, printed in its not-suitable-for-wusses entirety on Deadspin. Kluwe poses a simple rhetorical question to Burns: “How does gay marriage, in any way shape or form, affect your life?”
The football player, who apparently has trained his imagination to take fanciful and vulgar leaps and bounds while waiting on the sidelines to go in and kick, goes on to suggest several ludicrous and obscene fears that might be plaguing lawmaker Burns. These fears center around body parts that throb and bodily emissions that could topple a presidency.
Whether wilting before Kluwe’s grotesque bodily imagery or bowing to the punter’s vitriolic logic, Emmett C. Burns backed down from his demands to muzzle Brendon Ayanbadejo and granted that the football player and the lawmaker both had the right to speak their minds.
Still, Burns has a ways to go before he can be applauded for granting the constitutionally guaranteed pursuit of happiness so freely recognized by the following 10 pro athletes.
Photo by Tom Dahlin/Getty Images
