ROH World Champion Jay Briscoe's blatant homophobia should embarrass the wrestling industry

Being the world champion of a wrestling organization comes with certain responsibilities. They are held to a higher standard in and out of the ring, as their behavior reflects back on the company. Which is fair enough, as those that are given the opportunity to hold the promotion's most prestigious title should return the favor by ensuring that they don't shame the people in charge who made that decision with their actions.

However, even if he wasn't the Ring of Honor World Champion, Jay Briscoe's latest homophobic outburst on Twitter should not only embarrass ROH management, but also the whole wrestling industry. It's one thing to politely disagree with gay marriage, quite another to say that you would commit acts of violence on anyone who teaches your children that it's OK:

"The Delaware Senate passed a bill yesterday that allows same sex couples to get married. If that makes you happy, then congratulations!!!!!!

... try and teach my kids that there's nothing wrong with that and I'll fucking shoot you"

This is much worse than TNA World Heavyweight Champion Bully Ray recently using gay slurs to trash talk a ringside fan. Ray was a heel who went too far in his attempts to generate heat whilst in the zone performing. It was a dumb move, but at least he and Dixie Carter quickly apologized for his indiscretion.

Even though he plays a redneck character, Jay Briscoe is supposed to be a babyface and here he is spewing hateful anti-gay rhetoric in a public forum. There are certainly many young, impressionable gay wrestling fans out there that are struggling to come to terms with their sexuality and such statements from someone they may look up to would undoubtedly cause them psychological harm. That's why such overt homophobia needs to be completely eliminated from the wrestling business.

Moreover, this is not the first time that Briscoe has made such a mistake, tweeting two years ago that "Damn there's a lot of fags out in New York today #WhatTheFuck". Clearly, some people never learn and that infraction must have went unpunished from Sinclair Broadcasting and ROH's higher ups at the time for him to make a similar error in judgement again. Hopefully that doesn't happen again.