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The Kansas City Chiefs kicker’s divisive 20-minute speech touched on gender roles, birth control and life after graduation.

Why Chiefs’ Harrison Butker’s commencement speech is under fire

Harrison Butker’s 2024 commencement speech at Benedictine College has set off a cascade of reactions, with some commentators calling the Kansas City Chiefs kicker’s words “misogynistic.”

What, exactly, did Butker say in the polarizing speech delivered before the Catholic liberal arts college’s graduating class in Atchison, Kansas on May 11?

During the 20-minute speech, Butker, who is Catholic himself, said he intended to say the “difficult stuff out loud.” In his own words, he has “gained quite the reputation for speaking my mind.”

In one particularly scrutinized segment, Butker addressed “the women” graduates directly in an attempt to counter the “most diabolical lies” they have been told. More than professional achievements, he said they should be excited to take on the “vocation” of homemaker, using his own wife, Isabelle Butker, as an example.

He shared that his wife’s life “really started when she began living her vocation as a wife and as a mother,” and later said, “Isabelle’s dream of having a career might not have come true, but if you asked her today if she has any regrets on her decision, she would laugh out loud, without hesitation, and say, ‘Heck, no.’”

He urged the men in the graduating class to be “unapologetic in your masculinity, fighting against the cultural emasculation of men.”

The wide-ranging speech also touched on pride, birth control, COVID restrictions, “dangerous gender ideologies” and Catholic principles.

Butker described Catholic pride as “not the deadly sin sort of pride that has an entire month dedicated to it, but true God-centered pride,” an apparent dig at Pride Month.

On the topic of birth control, he said, “There is nothing good about playing God with having children — whether that be your ideal number or the perfect time to conceive.” He called out abortion, IVF and surrogacy as symptoms of “disorder.”

Other parts of the speech were specific to the Catholic church, including his “love” for traditional Latin mass and the state of the priesthood: “Sadly, many priests we are looking to for leadership are the same ones who prioritize their hobbies or even photos with their dogs and matching outfits for the parish directory.”

Commenting on life after the “Benedictine bubble,” he prepared graduates for what might come next in what he described as a departure from Catholic principles: “Sadly, I’m sure many of you know the countless stories of good and active members of this community who, after graduation and moving away from the Benedictine bubble, have ended up moving in with their boyfriend or girlfriend prior to marriage. Some even leave the Church and abandon God. It is always heartbreaking to hear these stories, and there is a desire to know what happened and what went wrong.”

Seeming to acknowledge the political nature of his speech, Butker said near the end, “I know that my message today had a little less fluff than is expected for these speeches, but I believe that this audience and this venue is the best place to speak openly and honestly about who we are and where we all want to go, which is Heaven.”

Responses to the speech have been split. It generated applause from the in-person audience, including after the segment about women in the home. But it has largely received fierce backlash online.

Nuns associated with the college said in a statement his speech did not represent the school or its founders’ vision, saying: “Instead of promoting unity in our church, our nation, and the world, his comments seem to have fostered division.”

The NFL said in its statement that “his views are not those of the NFL as an organization. The NFL is steadfast in our commitment to inclusion, which only makes our league stronger.”

Butker has not publicly commented on the backlash.