After their shortstop wore eye black featuring a Spanish phrase that translates to “you are a faggot,” the Toronto Blue Jays decided to suspend Yunel Escobar for three games, in keeping with the team and league policy against defamatory statements. The MLB had also penalized John Rocker in 2000 for making racist and anti-gay slurs in an off-field interview and suspended a Braves pitching coach this year who made anti-gay remarks and sexual gestures at fans, as it is within the league’s authority to reprimand certain actions of its players and coaches. Not according to the Religious Right, however, as anti-gay activists are now coming to Escobar’s defense.

WorldNetDaily editor Joseph Farah said that the MLB’s actions represented a victory for the “gay gestapo” and “homosexual fascists – who are like the anti-American poofy sect of the Taliban,” and maintained that Escobar should be excused since, Farah claims, “you are a faggot” is used “far more often by homosexuals than by heterosexuals.” Scott Lively of Defend the Family International also loved the article, but doesn’t seem to know what a baseball looks like.

Are Mom and apple pie next? Those may be the next targets of the homosexual fascists – who are like the anti-American poofy sect of the Taliban. It’s not enough to institute speech codes in colleges and universities. It’s not enough to chill free speech in the media. It’s not enough to shamelessly parade their sexuality in front of America’s children on the streets, in schools and on television. Now the crude, vulgar, name-calling, arrogant pink-shirt gestapo is going after baseball and other American sports. Here’s the latest example: Yunel Escobar is a native of Cuba who plays shortstop for the Toronto Blue Jays. He probably thought once he left Fidel Castro’s island paradise that he would be able to speak his mind, joke around and not fear the thought police. Was he ever wrong. A couple weeks ago, Escobar, like so many other sports stars, put a little message on the eye black they use to cut down on the sun’s glare. It said, “tu ere maricon.” In English, that roughly translates to “you are a faggot” – a term used, ironically, far more often by homosexuals than by heterosexuals. … Escobar will be required “to participate in an outreach initiative to help educate society about insensitivity and tolerance of others,” according to an ESPN report. Tolerance? Who’s being intolerant here? The gay gestapo – that’s who. … Yes, I think Mom and apple pie, 6,000-year-old moral standards and freedom of speech are all endangered species nowadays.

The American Family Association’s Buster Wilson railed against the gay rights group Truth Wins Out, which asked in a blog post if Escobar “deserve[s] a similar punishment for his use of an anti-gay slur” as the Braves pitching coach, a question which set Wilson off into another unhinged rant. Wilson called the “Big Gay” group “heterophboic, christiphobi [sic], and conservaphobic” and claimed “Big Gay wants to take over our lives and see us harmed, censored, and punished in some way when we speak the truth of the Big Gay agenda against those of us who believe in traditional values!”