Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville continues to gleefully play games with America’s military out of pure spite for the Pentagon’s policy of providing travel funds and support for troops and dependents seeking abortions but who are based in states that prohibit the healthcare procedure.
Alabama is one of those states.
From its refusal to abide by SCOTUS’ ruling that it creates a second Black Congressional district to Attorney General Steve Marshall claiming that the state can prosecute people who help women travel out of state for abortions, Alabama is excelling in its efforts to discriminate, oppress and revive Jim Crow.
But the state is also impacting the country through Senator Tuberville’s decision to play politics with the military and hold up hundreds of promotions, something which has historically been done without obstruction during every administration.
His ridiculous and childish stance is “unsettling for the institution,” according to Army Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
While politicians and groups speak out against his blockade, sports, an entity that normally supports the military, has gone silent.
It’s a hypocritical position from an industry that supports Armed Forces Day and hosts troops at games.
Sports have traditionally rallied around moments and causes involving the military, and that’s great.
But sports has said nothing as Tuberville continues playing games.
Tuberville would rather block over 300 appointments to play political hardball on abortion, which so many are supporting the right to have, than allow a bipartisan, traditional and historically undisturbed time in the military to proceed.
And this shouldn’t be an issue solely reserved for the WNBA, NWSL and other women’s leagues to fight because it involves a woman’s right to choose. If a league publically supported the military and its members through promotions and events, then it should support the right for members to receive appointments publically as well.
Unfortunately, that hasn’t happened as sports has stayed out of the Republican culture war that is ripping the country apart. Yet athletes, especially Black athletes, are the ones most negatively impacted by many of the restrictive and racist laws that are being passed in red states across America.
I’ve called on sports to take a stand and fight back against the oppressive wave of legislation and sentiment that many in power are fueling, but the industry has stayed silent while cashing bigger and bigger checks.
While the leagues, conferences and organizations might not take a public stance on this issue, athletes can and should, for they have the opportunity to rally support to help end the blockade imposed by Tuberville.
The former president, whom Tuberville supports, has made it clear that if he’s put back in office, he will destroy the government as we know it, simply because he wants to be able to get away with crimes that he knowingly commits.
He, and the other Republicans running for president, want to turn the clock back on rights that have been fought for and that many have perished for.
Tuberville has no regard for that for he was never part of that fight. Instead, he wants to make a spectacle out of an arm of the government that shouldn’t be used for political wrangling.
And his stance just might push many out of the service altogether.
“They are watching this spectacle and might conclude that their service at the highest ranks of our military is no longer valued by members of Congress or, by extension, the American public,” penned Carlos Del Toro, Frank Kendall and Christine Wormuth, secretaries of the Navy, Air Force and Army, respectively, in the Washington Post.
“Any claim that holding up the promotions of top officers does not directly damage the military is wrong — plain and simple,” they continued.
It’s obvious that colleagues, or the military itself, have no effect on the stubborn and heartless Alabama Senator.
But one powerful group could potentially push him off his petty little soapbox, a group that he, as a former football coach, was once a former member of.
Could you imagine the impact of Black Crimson Tide players walking off the field in protest over the whitewashing of AP Black History courses? Or if Auburn gymnasts refused to take the mat in protest of Tuberville’s foolish stance?
Being an athlete does not preclude anyone from the waves of oppression being summed up in states like Florida, Texas, Alabama, Arkansas and Oklahoma, and it’s time athletes, especially Black and female athletes, recognize this fact.
If sports recalls what the 2015 Missouri football team did in the fight against racism, it can see how sports can drive change.
MLB moved All-Star venues over voter suppression. The NFL refused to award the Super Bowl to Arizona after it voted not to acknowledge Martin Luther King Day as a Federal holiday and the NCAA moved its championships out of North Carolina over the passage of the horrid HB2. So there is precedent.
Sports can no longer remain on the sidelines while Tuberville puts our national security at risk and DeSantis and Arkansas governor Sarah Huckabee whitewash education.
These threats must be addressed, and sports has the power to do just that.
Now it’s time it got in the game.
