To deny an entire group of people the ability to be legal couples is anti-American and anti-freedom. As a devoted husband and father of two, I can't imagine the state of Minnesota not recognizing my love for my wife Isabelle. We would welcome and respect the equal rights for gays to experience the same joy and privileges of marriage that we do.

One of the main coaching points I've heard throughout my entire life is, 'How you respond to difficult situations defines your character,' and I think it's a good saying. I also think it applies to more than just the players.

Football is an absolutely idiotic pastime by any rational standards. You're running into other people as hard as you can, you get frequent muscle strains and ligament tears, and the protective padding really doesn't do all that much to absorb the blunt trauma.

My numbers and my stats were exactly the same. I was doing what the coaches wanted me to do. And what I had been doing up to that point was enough to get me a very well-paying contract with the Vikings. ... In my mind there was only one thing that had changed from the year before and the year I got cut: And that was I started speaking out in support of same-sex rights.

Well, if you count my phone as an access point (which I do), I'm pretty much constantly online unless I'm at an event or practice or something.

To deny an entire group of people the ability to be legal couples is anti-American and anti-freedom. As a devoted husband and father of two, I can't imagine the state of Minnesota not recognizing my love for my wife Isabelle. We would welcome and respect the equal rights for gays to experience the same joy and privileges of marriage that we do.

Every single human civilization has failed over time, and my belief is that it's due to a lack of rational empathy, of understanding that if you don't have equality in your society, the conflicts you breed (whether internally or externally) will eventually cause its collapse.