A former Miami Dolphins cheerleader has filed a discrimination complaint against the team and the NFL with the Florida Commission on Human Relations because she said her Christian faith made her a target of ridicule by other cheerleaders and supervisors, NBC News reports.
Kristan Ann Ware, 27, cheered with the Dolphins for three years. She says after she disclosed that she was a virgin by choice and was going to remain so until marriage, she was ostracized by the organization.
The harassment began in 2015 during a trip to London for a game against the Jets, during which other members of the cheerleading squad were talking about their “sex playlist” on a bus ride. That’s when Ware “was pushed to give her playlist.”
“Kristin told her teammates that she was waiting until she was married because of her personal relationship with God,” the complaint reads.
“She was sensitive to everyone around her having different beliefs and ideals so she further stated that it was her personal conviction.”
That began the ridicule, and it got worse once she put an image of her baptism and a Bible verse on social media. Ware says that cheerleader director Dorie Grogan used the verse to put her faith down during an interview for returning dancers.
“Let’s talk about your virginity,” Grogan supposedly told Ware in April of 2016. “As far as we are concerned you have taken something that was once upon a time pure and beautiful and you’ve made it dirty.”
Ware said she made the Dolphins’ human resources department aware of the situation, but the ridicule continued. The complaint says, among other things, that she was forced to wear “angel wings” during a 2016 fashion show in reference to her faith and was falsely accused of “groping a fan’s breast and butt at an appearance.”
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“I felt like I was walking on eggshells, but yet a football player can publicly announce whatever he believes in,” she told CBS.
“Whether it’s kneeling for a political indifference or kneeling because he does have a relationship with God and he wants the pray before a game, he has a right to do that.”
Ware also said she wasn’t allowed to mention God, even though she wasn’t proselytizing.
“She never once witnessed to anyone, she never once asked anyone if they believed in Jesus,” Sara Blackwell, Ware’s lawyer, told NBC. “She is the friendliest person you will ever meet. If she talked about her faith in God, it’s because that’s who she is, not because she is trying to convert anyone.”
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Incredibly, the Miami Dolphins said that the incident was dealt with, even though Grogan remains with the team.
“In 2016, we were made aware of an incident with our cheerleaders that fell short of our standards and expectations,” a source with the Miami Dolphins said. “We immediately addressed the issue and reprimanded the supervisor, who subsequently apologized to the entire team.”
Ware, needless to say, is no longer with the team.
“I loved my job,” Ware said during a Thursday interview with WFLA-TV. “It was great, but after that things just started to change… It became unbearable.”
Apparently, it takes a cheerleader and the specter of the NFL for cases of blatant anti-Christian discrimination to actually get covered by the media, with NBC, CBS and The New York Times, among others, paying attention to the story for once. It didn’t hurt that Ware’s complaint also comes as the league is enduring yet another public relations crisis, this time over how cheerleaders are treated.
A lawsuit, filed by former New Orleans Saints cheerleader Bailey Davis, alleged that the NFL had one set of rules for male players and another set for female cheerleaders, a practice which violates federal anti-discrimination laws. The suit also brought to light questionable practices on the NFL’s part pertaining to cheerleaders, including a “jiggle” test for prospective Buffalo Bills cheerleaders in which they were screened for fat by doing jumping jacks to see if any visible fat would jiggle.
The NFL responded to Ware’s accusation in a typically NFL-ian fashion.
“The NFL and all NFL member clubs support fair employment practices,” a statement for the league read. “Everyone who works in the NFL, including cheerleaders, has the right to work in a positive and respectful environment that is free from any and all forms of harassment and discrimination and fully complies with state and federal laws.”
Lawsuits have been filed over far less than this, and the fact that Ware is only seeking arbitration with the league and a meeting with Roger Goodell ought to be treated as a godsend by NFL officials. In time, maybe the league will come around to see it that way and offer an olive branch to Ware. Maybe the Dolphins will finally fire Dorie Grogan, which they should have done in the first place if Ware’s allegations were substantiated. Maybe they’ll realize that this wouldn’t happen to a player, nor would it be tolerated if it happened to someone of a different faith.
As of now, none of this has happened, and the case of Kristan Ware remains yet another in a long list of reasons to have very serious reservations about the National Football League.
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