Pride leads to disgrace

Just in time for that annual celebration of sin and untruth known as Pride, an executive for baseball’s Washington Nationals has been fired for admitting—on camera—that his team discriminated against a Catholic pitcher.

The pitcher’s crime? Daring to suggest that “inclusion” means respecting people of faith, too.

On May 29, the Nationals fired Sean Hudson from his post as the team’s director of community relations. It’s a job that involves connecting with all segments of the Washington, D.C., metro area—you know, potential ticket buyers, which sometimes include large church groups.

The Nationals initially placed Hudson on leave after O’Keefe Media Group, a relatively obscure online publication dedicated to shining a light on corruption, published video showing Hudson bragging about keeping devout Catholic hurler Trevor Williams away from social media. Hudson also boasted to an undercover investigative journalist that the team wouldn’t let Williams appear in light-hearted videos, shown on Nationals Park’s giant scoreboard between innings, where players answer such questions as, “Is a hot dog a sandwich?”

“One of our pitchers, Trevor Williams, he is very Catholic,” Hudson says on camera.

“The Dodgers had a group out to the stadium who were drag queens who sometimes dress up as nuns. He went on like a social media and said, like, ‘This is wrong, this is my religion, you are mocking it.’ That’s why we don’t let him go on social.”

Even worse: Hudson expressed indifference to whether the Nationals lose dollars from people of faith.

“If you’re a sports fan, and we [tick] you off, where else are you gonna go?” he said. “Are you gonna drive past us from Virginia and go to Baltimore [to watch the Orioles]? … Either way, I don’t give a [expletive deleted].”

Williams did a podcast interview in 2025 with Bishop Robert Barron—who openly opposed the Dodgers’ decision to honor the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence at the team’s 2023 Pride celebration—where he explained why he took the stand he did.

“Baseball stadiums should be a place where everyone feels welcomed, like 100%,” Williams told Barron. “We should all feel welcomed there. But that was against one certain religion.

“If you don’t draw a line in the sand, who’s gonna do it?”

(In honoring the Sisters, the Dodgers alienated most Protestants, too, as they share most Catholics’ religious beliefs concerning marriage, gender, and sexuality. But I digress.)

Williams didn’t bash LGBTQ people. When he said, “We should all feel welcomed,” that included LGBTQ fans, too. But real inclusion works both ways. That was Williams’ point.

Still, Hudson admitted that he felt compelled to shove Williams in a closet because he refused to play ball with the LGBTQ agenda. And in doing so, Hudson likely exposed his employer to legal liability.

In the video featuring Hudson’s comments, reporter Alex Stein calls attention to Title VII, the federal law that prohibits employers from discriminating on the basis of religion. The video highlights language in the law prohibiting employers from limiting, classifying, or segregating employees “in any way which would deprive or tend to deprive any individual of employment opportunities … because of such individual’s” religion. Writing as a lawyer who sometimes handles Title VII religious discrimination cases, I can attest that participating on social media or in videos meant to entertain fans would qualify as employment opportunities that Hudson, acting on the Nationals’ behalf, denied Williams.

U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., has called on the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate the Nationals for religious discrimination, Fox News reported.

Worse than that, though, Hudson made his employers seem anti-Catholic. I wonder how Pope Leo XIV, a Chicago native and White Sox fan, feels about that.

Regardless, the Nationals are now in damage-control mode. They’ve apologized to Williams, calling him “a valued member of the organization” and are now trying to mend fences with their Catholic fans.

“First off, I want to say unequivocally that we are not anti-Catholic,” Jason Sinnarajah, the Nationals’ president of business operations, said at a press conference before the Nationals’ May 29 home game against—irony of ironies—the San Diego Padres, a team named after missionaries who brought Catholicism to California in the 1700s.

“We’re horrified by the comments made on the video,” Sinnarajah continued. “The comments don’t reflect us as an organization, our values, and who we are.”

It saddens me that every time it seems America is moving past the days when teams silenced athletes for expressing even respectful disagreement with Pride celebrations or LGBTQ lifestyles, statements like Hudson’s remind me those days are still here. I don’t know that they’ll ever be gone, if only because the rainbow mafia is quick to demand the head of any coach or athlete who dares cross them.

For that reason, I’m glad the Nationals made a public example of Hudson, because it represents a step toward true inclusion. However, I’m also hopeful that Hudson’s downfall will lead him to repentance and saving faith.

Oh, and memo to the Nats: Let Williams appear in entertaining in-game videos once in a while.