Pride Nights built LGBTQ+ inclusion in pro sports over three decades. That progress is now under pressure

Pride Nights have always drawn both celebration and backlash. The latest flashpoint featuring the San Francisco Giants shows how unsettled that balance has become.

Pride-themed sporting events have become commonplace in North American men’s professional sports leagues. These events were introduced with a simple message: LGBTQ+ fans belong in sports. Opposition to them is nothing new — pushback against Pride Nights stretches back at least to 2022 — but it has escalated over the past few years.

Most recently, three San Francisco Giants pitchers wrote Bible verses on their Pride Night hats in an apparent protest against the team’s Pride Night, while a fourth player wore the standard cap instead. No player or uniformed staff is required to wear them , but Major League Baseball (MLB) has a longstanding ban on players or uniformed staff writing statements of any kind of their cap or uniform. The league cited the rule when it warned the pitchers in a decision that drew a Department of Justice inquiry into the MLB response .

All this has left major sports organizations with the question of what to do next. Why have they become controversial? Objections to Pride Nights are nothing new.

In 2022, five Tampa Bay Rays players refused to wear Pride-themed jerseys . The following year brought a much larger wave in the NHL: players including Eric and Marc Staal, Ivan Provorov and James Reimer refused to wear Pride-themed warmup jerseys on religious grounds , which eventually pushed the league to ban “specialty” jerseys and stick tape. The NHL reversed the stick tape ban weeks later after players, including Connor McDavid, objected.

In 2025, Clayton Kershaw, then a Dodgers pitcher, wrote the same Genesis 9:12-16