Kansas City, Mo., Aug 31, 2017 / 11:08 am
As part of a new program to educate baseball players on the dangers of substance abuse, the general manager for the Kansas City Royals added pornography to the list of potential harms for his team.
In an Aug. 29 statement, Royals general manager Dayton Moore explained that the team's leadership formation program discusses the problems surrounding drug and alcohol use, and also "pornography and the effects of what that does to the minds of players."
Moore expressed hope that team formation program might focus on the development of players beyond the early years of their careers, into the "next part of their journey – what type of husbands [and] what types of fathers [the players may become]."
He also linked pornography to the damage it has on family life and other relationships, saying that it can lead to the domestic "abuse of women."
Moore's comments came in response to questions about Danny Duffy, a Royals pitcher who was arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol on Sunday Aug. 27, shortly after the Royals lost 12-0 to the Cleveland Indians.
Moore isn't the first sports figure to speak out openly against the dangers of porn.
In 2016, former NFL player Terry Crews revealed that pornography had been destructive in his own life, saying that the addictive habit had cost him his first marriage. He also said pornography fed a sense of entitlement, which made him believe that his needs were more important than his wife's.
"When you believe that you are more valuable than another person, you kind of feel like they owe you, and if they don't do what you tell them then, you know, [they're] not good enough," he said on one of the three anti-porn videos he released on Facebook.
In the 2016 apostolic exhortation Amoris laetitia, Pope Francis urged parents to equip children to deal with the "flood of pornography" available on the internet. In 2015, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops issued "Create in Me a Clean Heart," a pastoral letter addressing the problem of pornography.