Do you think the Marine Corps should continue to support the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC)

[Omaha Steve]

The Marine Corps giving $2 million+ of taxpayer money every year to the UFC - an org that has many incidents of hate speech, homophobia and sexist behavior by many of its fighters and president, Dana White. Right now, some colleagues and I are at San Diego Pride supporting the veterans who have been able to march for the first time ever in uniform and we've been having conversations with marchers/supporters about the rampant homophobia from members who are associated with the UFC. We have gathered thousands of petitions and are stil getting more from veterans who do not want the USMC to be associated with the UFC. Over the weekend, the marines released the following poll (http://bit.ly/M1eiN6).

Vote here: http://polldaddy.com/poll/6399644/

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Official Marine Corps poll:

With a veterans group coming out against the practice, do you think the Marine Corps should continue to support the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC)?

Yes, it lets us get the Marine Corps recruiting message out to our target audience
Yes, the UFC is the sport that most embodies the military’s warrior culture
No, the Marine Corps shouldn’t support an organization that does not uphold Marine Corps principles { !!!
No, the Marine Corps shouldn’t be spending its money to sponsor sporting events

[MrSlayer]

1. I don't think they should be sponsoring anything.

What a waste of money.

[Electric Monk]

2. I also don't think the UFC needs subsidies. They're doing just fine, making money hand over fist.

[MrSlayer]

4. Yep. They've overtaken boxing.

And rightly so. Boxing is so fixed it's ridiculous. They've killed themselves.

[Edweird]

3. I think it's kinda funny that the fighters make homophobic comments -

considering that what they do looks like gay porn to me.

[William769]

6. Trust me it's nothing like Gay porn.

Gay porn has a purpose.

[cthulu2016]

5. Kind of lost me at "taxpayer money"

Of course it is "taxpayer money"... I am tired about hearing about "taxpayer money" as if we are supposed to have a plebiscite over every line item. I detest the "taxpayer money" thing when the RW does it 24/7 so I'm not going to play favorites.


Now then, the Marines have a budget for recruiting. If the Marines feel that they do the best job of recruiting by advertising (that's what sponsorship is) aimed at UFC fans then that is what the Marine Corps thinks. I do not have any evidence that the Marines are doing a bad job recruiting, by their standards, and I have no reason to assume this is not an effective use of their promotional/recruiting money.

As to the homophobia of people associated with UFC... if the UFC itself if officially homophobic, then no sponsorship. That's easy.

And if the UFC has on-air personalities as employes who also say fucked up things, again, no sponsorship.

If some UFC fighters/trainers are homophobic, that's trickier. The best course is probably for the Marines to tell the UFC to reign in its asssociation with homophobia in the same way the NFL and MLB and other sports do, or else no sponsorship money.

Presumably the UFC can control the content of their own broadcasts, and for live coverage can tell fighters/trainers there is a fine from their purses for saying anything offensive in that way on air.