Dodgers staying mum after Clayton Kershaw's response to Pride Night is a bad look

Why are we still writing about this? Why is this a war of who can get the last word? All this was supposed to be was a Pride Night celebration at Dodger Stadium, something that's been commonplace in sports for years now.

Instead, the Dodgers had to uninvite and then reinvite the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence after pressure from both conservative Christian groups and the LGBTQ community. Then, after angering the Christian community twice (?), they had to add an event on the calendar to counter the outrage on the other side.

The Dodgers snuck in an announcement on Friday detailing the return of Christian Faith and Family Day, which is now set for July 30 after it hadn't been held since the 2019 season, and their tweet got absolutely roasted ... by Christians!

Then, Clayton Kershaw, who helped spearhead the return of the religious celebration, conducted an interview with the LA Times (subscription required) stating that he disagreed with the Dodgers giving the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence a "Community Hero Award," highlighting that he believes they "make fun of" Christianity, which he doesn't believe is acceptable.

Whether you like or dislike what Kershaw said, it's kind of hard to fault him for feeling that way because of his devout Christian faith, especially with the way he articulated it after saying he has no plans to boycott Pride Night.

"This has nothing to do with the LGBTQ community or pride or anything like that. This is simply a group that was making fun of a religion, that I don’t agree with.

As a follower of Christ, we’re supposed to love everybody well. And I think that means being able to be at a lot of different places and be able to be a part of a lot of different things."

- Clayton Kershaw, LA Times

Clayton Kershaw counters Dodgers Pride Night with Christian Faith and Family Day

The most troubling aspect of all, however, was the Dodgers declining to comment when they're the ones that escalated this mess. They lacked initial conviction with the decision to invite the Sisters (and perhaps didn't do their research?), then bent to outside pressure from Marco Rubio (who apparently has nothing better to do with his time as a member of the US Senate), and then bent to outside pressure again when Pride Night was jeopardized after the other LGBTQ groups threatened to withdraw from participation.

An organization of great influence such as the Dodgers needs to know that they'll rarely be pleasing everybody when making such decisions. They botched this in every manner possible with their lack of preparation and their poor damage control tactics.

Having Kershaw be the spokesperson for this and potentially putting him in any sort of negative light isn't fair, just like it wasn't fair for the organization to spurn the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence and thereby put an even bigger target on their backs.

Nobody said this would be easy to navigate, but the Dodgers certainly made it exponentially more difficult than they needed to. And it's likely going to come at the expense of harming reputations as ghouls on social media continue to magnify everything more and more negatively.