Patricia Heaton defends Harrison Butker’s comments about women: ‘Everybody calm down’

Patricia Heaton he defended the Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker following his controversial graduation speech at Benedictine College earlier this month.

Under a post with the caption “Everybody calm down,” Heaton shared a video on Instagram on Saturday, May 18, in which she defended 28-year-old Butker’s comments in his speech about the role of women in society as “housewives”, encouraging women graduates to give up their careers and become stay-at-home mothers.

“I don’t understand why everyone has their panties twisted,” Heaton said in her video. “(Butker) gave his opening speech, during which the audience applauded twice and at the end gave him a standing ovation. They obviously liked what he was saying. The guy defends his own views and Catholic doctrine. So what? It’s his opinion. He may have one. It is allowed. He’s not a monster if he says what he believes. He was much more concerned about bishops than about women or what women’s choices were or what he thought they should be. So I don’t understand.”

Butker delivered the commencement address at Benedictine College in Kansas on May 11. In his speech, he not only criticized working women, but also LGBTQIA+ pride, access to abortion, and even in vitro fertilization and surrogacy as methods of family planning.

“I am a Catholic who worked throughout my children’s childhood and I believe God opened this door for me,” Heaton continued. “Luckily, it was a schedule that basically allowed me to be a full-time mom. I don’t see anything offensive in what he said, even though my life is completely different. Maybe he’ll even look at my life and say this isn’t how it’s supposed to be. All right. That’s his opinion.”

She concluded, “I’m just curious why people are ‘offended.’ If you have made choices in your life and you feel that they are the right choices, you feel comfortable and they work for you and your family, then great. And if they are different from his, great. You do it. He will do it. Everyone, relax.

In his speech, Butker addressed the “ladies present” at the Benedictines’ graduation ceremony, saying they had been told “the most diabolical lies.”

“Some of you may have successful careers around the world, but I would venture to guess that most of you are most excited about your marriage and the children you will bring into this world,” he said. Butker then mentioned his wife Isabelle, who he believed “was the first to say that her life truly began when she began to live her calling as a wife and mother.” He also credited her with being the reason he is “the man I am because I have a wife who relies on her calling.”

While Heaton came to Butker’s defense as a Catholic, the nuns at Benedictine College couldn’t say the same and have since condemned the Super Bowl champion’s opening speech.

“The Sisters of Mount St. “Scholastica does not believe that Harrison Butker’s comments in his 2024 commencement address at Benedictine College represent the Catholic, Benedictine liberal arts college that our founders envisioned and to which we are so committed,” the sisters said in a statement, posted via Facebook on Thursday, May 16.

“We want to be known as an inclusive, welcoming community with Benedictine values ​​that have endured for over 1,500 years and spread across every continent and nation,” the statement continued. “We believe these values ​​are at the core of Benedictine College.”