MINNEAPOLIS - If ever there were a way to get in the last word Chris Kluwe has done it.
Thursday morning Kluwe dropped an 11-page attack on the website Deadspin.com claiming the Vikings canned him largely because of his activism for same sex marriage.
"The only thing that changed from the previous year to when I got cut was I had started speaking out about same sex rights. When I looked at everything else that happened that is the only logical conclusion I can draw from all the evidence that is there," Kluwe told 1500 ESPN radio Thursday afternoon.
In his Deadspin piece titled: "I was an NFL Player until I was fired by two cowards and a bigot" Kluwe goes after former head coach Leslie Frazier, GM Rick Spielman and special teams coach Mike Priefer.
Kluwe opens by saying, "I honestly don't know if my activism was the reason I got fired. However, I'm pretty confident it was."
He then goes on to claim he was called into the office of Coach Frazier the day after he wrote his first piece in Deadspin in September of 2012 that included his stance on marriage equality and Frazier said, in Kluwe's words: "Coach Frazier immediately told me that I needed to be quiet and stop speaking out on this stuff."
Days later Kluwe said his coach, special teams coach Mike Priefer started using homophobic language in his presence.
Kluwe claims Priefer said on multiple occasions: "that I would wind up burning in Hell with the gays…"
He went on to say that in a special teams meeting Preifer said: "We should round up all the gays, send them to an island and then nuke it until it glows."
Kluwe said those statements by Priefer were followed by a tense relationship between them until t last spring when Kluwe was cut from the team.
In a statement Mike Preifer denies all of these allegations made by Kluwe and said:
"I do not tolerate discrimination of any type and am respectful of all individuals. I personally have gay family members who I love and support..."
As for the Vikings they said this in a statement:
"We were made aware of Chris Kluwe's allegations for the first time today. We take them very seriously and will thoroughly review this matter. Any notion that Chris was released from our football team due to his stance on marriage equality is entirely inaccurate..."
