Yesterday, Nike announced that it was terminating its relationship with world renowned boxer Manny Pacquiao after he made some controversial comments about the LGBTQ community. During an interview on a Filipino TV station earlier this week, Pacquiao compared same-sex relations to animal sex, claiming “If you have male-to-male or female-to-female [relationships], then people are worse than animals.” Why? “Have you seen any animal male-to-male or female-to-female relations?” Just hours later, he apologized on Twitter, but it was much too late.
Nike released a statement, saying it found Pacquiao’s comments “abhorrent,” but that didn’t stop the boxer from continuing his narrative on social media. Earlier this morning, Pacquiao uploaded a picture of himself posing with his wife, with a lengthy segment of a bible verse as a caption. In the verse, there’s this tidbit, which looks every bit like Pacquiao thumbing his nose at Nike and the rest of his critics. “If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.” So much for that Twitter apology.
Pacquiao has since deleted the post, but it racked up over 18,000 likes while it was live, and expect him to take added heat for this throughout the day.
