“Someone with access to your account has violated our community guidelines. As a result, your account has been banned. You will no longer be able to comment, react, or report comments.”
Photo courtesy Ettagrove
Unless you dropped off the planet, you have probably heard about the kerfuffle over San Francisco Giants Pride Night on June 12, 2026. Four Christian ballplayers expressed their faith in two different ways: three affixed a verse from Genesis 9 to caps embroidered with “SF” in rainbow colors, while the fourth wore the regular Giants hat instead of the rainbow hat. The verse describes how God placed a rainbow in the sky after Noah’s flood as a promise never to flood the earth again.
Major League Baseball issued warnings to three Christian ballplayers for violating the uniform policy, which prohibits ballplayers from adding unapproved messages to their apparel.
MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred (photo courtesy CBS Sports.com)
U.S. Senator Josh Hawley then wrote to MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred, accusing the league of bigotry toward the Christian ballplayers and of applying a double standard. Manfred replied that the players would not be disciplined, adding that the Giants organization had failed to tell them that no one was required to wear the rainbow hat. This prompted speculation that the three players added the verse because they did not realize they could wear regular caps and wanted to signal disagreement with the LGBTQ+ community’s philosophy.
On June 15, the New York Post and California Post published my column about the controversy, which you can read here.
A San Francisco Giants-focused website called the McCovey Chronicles, part of SBNation, a sports blogging network owned by Vox Media, began posting about the controversy. I responded to some of the posts with a link to my Post column and another column I had written on the subject, which you can read here.
I also responded politely to some comments. The next thing I knew, I received this message from SBNation: “Someone with access to your account has violated our community guidelines. As a result, your account has been banned. You will no longer be able to comment, react, or report comments.”
So I wrote to Brady Klopfer, the producer and site manager of the McCovey Chronicles, and to editor Sami Higgins. I explained that I had read their community guidelines carefully and was certain I had not violated any. I asked them to tell me specifically which guideline I had transgressed.
Klopfer responded: “Our community guidelines are just that: guidelines. There are plenty of other ways to get banned. Ultimately, our moderation is based on keeping the community as welcoming, entertaining, and enjoyable as possible, and if people are harming that, they are often banned.”
He asked for my user name so he could investigate further, and I gave it to him. He then replied: “I reviewed. You were not a member of the community. You signed up, linked to your homophobic work, and we banned you. Simple as that.”
Since I was banned, I no longer have access to my comments, so the reader will have to take my word for it. I linked to the two columns mentioned above and replied to the comments politely and respectfully. I wrote back to Klopfer: “Wow! So if someone expresses a biblical, Christian viewpoint of homosexuality, you assume they hate LGBTQ+ people and are homophobic. So much for tolerance working both ways.”
The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states, “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.”
While a blog site like McCovey Chronicles is entitled to enforce its guidelines, it is still chilling to see practices like this in the United States, banning and suppressing speech that challenges a particular cultural view.
