The retired Eagles center had previously weighed in on Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker’s controversial commencement speech at Benedictine College.
Jason Kelce is setting things straight when it comes to how he views the roles he and his wife, Kylie Kelce, play in their household.
On Monday, the retired Philadelphia Eagles center responded to a critic on social media, who called him out for not publicly supporting Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker after Butker gave an arch-conservative graduation speech earlier this month.
“Your wife is a homemaker whose home is a mess,” the user on X, formerly Twitter, wrote. “Sorry but it is dirty and messy on television. Seems you’re a bit hypocritical.”
Kelce replied on X that he doesn’t consider his wife — a head varsity high school field hockey coach and autism awareness advocate — to be a “homemaker.”
“She has an occupation, as do I, and we keep our house the best we can,” he wrote. “Our marriage is a partnership, we are equals who are figuring it out on the daily. The only expectation is that we love each other, support one another, and are committed to our family, that comes first.”
He then pointed out that they are both responsible for the tidiness of their home and cleaning up after their three young daughters.
“If being a homemaker, works for some, and that’s what they want, then hell yea, that’s awesome, more power to you,” he added. “I want to be clear, I’m not downplaying that at all, but that is not our family dynamic.”
The former Eagles player also discussed Butker’s speech last week on “New Heights,” the podcast he co-hosts with his brother, Travis Kelce, who plays for the Chiefs with Butker.
Butker, who gave this year’s commencement address at Benedictine College, a Catholic liberal arts college in Kansas, said being a homemaker is, for women, “one of the most important titles of all.” The kicker also took aim at LGBTQ+ people, calling Pride a “deadly sin” and decrying “dangerous gender ideologies,” and the “tyranny of diversity, equity, and inclusion.”
Both Kelce brothers distanced themselves from Butker’s views, though they expressed connecting with the kicker’s love for his family.
“Make no mistake about it, a lot of the things he said in his commencement speech are not things that I align myself with. But he’s giving a commencement speech at a Catholic university and, shocker, it ended up being a very religious and Catholic speech,” Jason Kelce said.
He added that he’d feel as though he “failed as a dad” if his daughters accepted a commencement speaker telling them that they can only be homemakers.
The retired Eagles player said that Kylie Kelce was “a little bit frustrated” by Butker’s speech, before joking that he responded by telling his wife: “You’re going to need to go back in the kitchen and make me a sandwich, I’m listening to the game right now.”
“I hope she doesn’t hear that,” Jason Kelce said on the podcast while looking around, as his brother laughed.
“I also don’t think that women, for the most part, are the issue here,” he went on. “I think there is a much bigger issue with another gender in terms of raising kids, but I don’t want to go on that soapbox.”
Travis Kelce also weighed in on Butker’s speech on the podcast, saying he doesn’t think he “should judge [Butker] by his views, especially his religious views,” but that he didn’t agree with “just about any of” his teammate’s speech, other than “him loving his family and his kids.”
Butker has since doubled down on his controversial commencement speech.
“As to be expected, the more I’ve talked about what I value most — which is my Catholic faith — the more polarizing I’ve become,” Butker said at a gala event in Nashville, Tennessee on Friday. “It’s a decision I’ve consciously made and one I do not regret at all.”
