The high school basketball playoffs in my state of Pennsylvania are winding down this week, which serves as a reminder of the ongoing debate on the fairness of private schools competing in the same playoff brackets as public schools.
The current system is blatantly unfair, and not just because the private schools can recruit players. They can also control their enrollments and thus the classification level that they play in despite literally have the whole world to bring in players from. That’s not an exaggeration. A private religious school not far from where I live has had players from the Dominican Republic, Africa, and Canada over the years.
Plus, these schools can usually expect specialization from players coming in to participate in certain sports, as opposed to public schools where kids often play multiple sports.
I know, some public schools recruit, too, but that’s an apples-to-coconuts comparison when weighing the advantages of private schools over public ones, so let’s put that red herring aside from the outset.
Here’s something that’s not called out enough: the obvious hypocrisy of private religious schools. There’s nothing Christian about exploiting an unfair advantage to achieve athletic success over public schools, who play pretty much with kids who’ve grown up in that community.
If these religious schools actually wanted to live the teachings of the God they claim to represent, they’d be the first to call for separate playoffs for public and private schools in the name of fairness.
But we know that’s not going to happen.
This kind of phoniness is seen in a lot more important things than sports. Evangelical Christians support a thrice-married, corrupt, pathological liar/adulterer who brags about sexually assaulting women. Catholic bishops speak out against civil rights protections for the LGBTQ community, claiming they’re somehow a violation of their own religious freedom. A group of wealthy Catholics in Colorado spends millions to buy data from online dating and hookup apps so they can track down alleged gay priests like common criminals and provide that information to the church.
I’m not feeling the love here.
It’s called projection when the accuser actually commits the acts that he claims someone else is doing. This applies to those Christians who seek to victimize others while falsely claiming that they’re the victims themselves.
When some Christians in search of moral failings point at the Left, they’re missing the mark. They should be pointing at themselves, instead.
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Thank you for reading my post. You can more of my writing on my blog: Musings of a Nobody.