In case you didn’t hear the news, there will be two new cheerleaders joining NFL teams this year. The big news is that the two cheerleaders are male. They are also gay. (Just check out these celebratory stories about the men being gay.) Why in the world is the NFL doing this?

According to reports, this will not be like normal male/female cheerleading, where the men play one (clearly masculine) role and the women another, such as the men hoisting the women high in the air.

Not at all. Instead, the men will perform the same lewd dances and make the same suggestive moves the ladies to. (Will they be as scantily clad as the gals too?)

What is the NFL thinking?

We know why the female NFL cheerleaders are there. Eye-candy. An appeal to leering heterosexual men. A lustful addition to a sporting event. A free floor-show. That’s it. The “cheerleading” itself is quite secondary, hence the scanty outfits and the suggestive moves.

Why, then, would the NFL add gay men to this scene?

Do you think that the same testosterone-driven heterosexual man who enjoys gazing at these gyrating women will enjoy gazing at a gyrating gay man?

As for the gay male cheerleaders themselves, can you imagine the amount of hatred that will come their way? During one single game, they are likely to hear the f*gg*t word more than they have heard in their entire lifetime. I imagine it will get very ugly very soon.

This, in turn, will likely lead to the NFL lecturing us about “tolerance.” Good luck.

A Potential Silver Lining

But perhaps there’s a silver lining to all this.

I’m aware that many fans enjoy the presence of the cheerleaders, and I don’t just mean male fans. Many female fans enjoy them too, appreciating their athleticism and routines.

As for the cheerleaders, they are obviously hard-working and devoted. It’s also widely-known that they receive minimal financial compensation for their efforts. And plenty of them are loving mothers and caring wives. So, I’m hardly condemning them as particularly evil.

But in my view, these lewd displays have no place at football games or basketball games or the like. Must women always be used as sex objects? (Baseball has made it fine all these years without these kinds of displays, and football became popular before such cheerleading was widespread.)

So, perhaps, the reaction to gay male cheerleaders will lead to a larger reevaluation of suggestive dances at athletic events. Perhaps there will be a shift back to real cheerleading rather than sex-glorifying displays. Perhaps God-fearing men won’t have to avert their eyes at games. Perhaps God-fearing families won’t have to care about what their kids are looking at.

Enough With the Sexualizing of Women

As to the question again of just why the NFL has made this decision, your guess is as good as mine.

Let women and men function as cheerleaders, but without the near-nudity and hyper-sexuality.

An article on the Slate website welcomed the news of the gay cheerleaders but suggested that “it’s worth pondering whether teams will use male cheerleaders as window dressing to enable the continued physical and financial exploitation of female employees.”

Yes, Slate mused, “What looks like evidence of some progressive discussions on gender and dance might just be the upshot of a lawyer’s good advice.”

What would really be progressive is if enough people will come out and say, “Enough with the sexualizing of women (or men) at our athletic events!”

Let women and men work as cheerleaders, but without the near-nudity and hyper-sexuality.

That would be progress.