today on larry king now n.f.l. player an unexpected gay rights activists cursed chloe society is trending towards more tolerance more equality and you see that in the locker room the oakland raiders punter is not afraid to speak his mind same sex marriage that is a human right and you can't discriminate against that but does being outspoken in the n.f.l. have a price when i mean the football locker room i don't i don't try to preach to guys i don't try to make them uncomfortable situations because i'm there to play football that's that's my job that's all ahead on larry king now. welcome to larry king our special guest today is chris kluwe the n.f.l. punter who recently signed with the oakland raiders he made headlines for arriving in open leather championing marriage equality and free speech he's written

a book which i can't wait to read because it looks really funny is what was on the mark beautifully unique sparkle poem he's it's out in stores now ok what's the title with all of the subtitle is on myths morons free speech football and the sort of the absurdity and what does the title mean so when i originally wrote the letter to delegate burns the phrase a lot of people seem to latch onto was lost. so i didn't think barnes and noble would stock a book with the title last stirs and in the censored version of the letter i wrote i've placed that with beautifully unique sparkle pony's so. that's that's the title you have before you know the whole board is that a he was responding to what other players that are giving the story right so brendon ayanbadejo who at the time played for the ravens he had recorded a youtube commercial promotional thing essentially promoting same sex rights because they had it an initiative coming up in maryland and he wanted to support it i did that new york for the same second. yeah and so you're familiar with that and

then dom telling it burns he wrote a letter to the teen saying you need to stifle brandon's speech you know no one wants to hear him speaking out about this now his mistake was he wrote his letter on official maryland state stationery any reference to himself and his constituents so i was like hold on a minute that's a first amendment violation first off a second off why do you care why does it matter gee what other people do with their lives because you're trying to control someone else's life so i wrote my letter in response essentially laying out those points with some choice vocabulary and it seems a lot of people paid attention to it as you can so with the readers or anyone before you're taking it on. with the vikings then and i had actually been i've been helping out in minnesota to defeat a constitutional amendment there that would have banned same sex marriage and i had had cleared that with the teams legal department they're like yeah you know go ahead you're free to participate in this and so when i wrote the letter it was you know it got a little bigger than i expected but it was also you know i thought it was the right thing to do and it was as good you think the vikings got to because of your

opinions i don't know just because i'm not i'm not in those meetings you know i don't know what do you think what i think i think my body of work stands for me i've been pretty consistent over the years and you know just looking forward to going out and punting while ensuring that i can still play did you have a good year i did i had i had consistently right on average with why normally have and you know i'd leave the vikings with every punting record raiders and all question you about your stand on these these no no they just they said you know hey don't you know don't let it be a distraction make sure football is the primary focus and for me it always is the primary focus of the birds over and so you know the only thing i got from the state of maryland was an official commendation thanking me for my support for equality. puzzled by the whole gay thing use obviously basketball now has to be zero he has assigned. they all say they who have a gay that football will be the last sport to. this was the nature of the sport and

the locker room you agree i don't agree simply because when you're in the locker room you're around those guys for the vast majority of your day you see the players in the locker more than you see your own family and you get to know guys really really well in football is also a young man's game you constantly have guys coming in from college cycling through and as we see in society society is trending towards more tolerance more equality and you see that in the locker room but baseball but well well baseball are really married to each other and yet here because of what those words say you know touching and violence and body contact and you think it on the phone player will come out of it some point yes i mean there there's without a doubt gay players play in the n.f.l. you know any but i don't know anyone personally but statistically speaking there there has to be gay players and there's been gay players that have played before i actually a book signing i did last night david ok i was there i knew and so you know he's here's a guy who played in the n.f.l. played well in the n.f.l. and who just so happened to be gay you know his sexuality had nothing to do with

how he played the game you think collins coming out addition tones will encourage other athletes i think that depends on whether or not he signs with the team because if he can still play and he isn't signed with the team a lot of athletes are going to look at that and say why are we going to risk this job that's so hard to get when there's a chance that we might lose our our income do you think it will happen. really when a star player comes out i think that would help a lot just because that's who he thought in devon island you career and he was right he's more kind of a backup guy you know and people will look at it and say oh he's just a back up but at the same time you know you're talking about the one percent of the population that's able to make it to a professional sports level so he's still really really good but yeah having a star player come out that would really enhance kind of the image it would be nice wizards appropriate place washington the nice of if they would want to reach chavez's layers to yeah yeah it's that one the thing is he should he should get a chance because he's seven feet tall you can't teach seven feet tall and so long

as he keeps his body in shape you know he can play back up center roll which is what he's done his entire her were just and it was supreme court decisions i like the dome decision because obviously it extended federal benefits to married couples not a huge fan of the prop eight decision because dollars because while it allowed gay marriage in california as soon as they hate the stay the problem is the supreme court had a chance to extend those rights across the entire country you know they just ruled on that he didn't have to be right right exactly where is they could have made a statement you know and they have pressed and they have loving v virginia that says marriage is a human right and they could have extended that out to say you know same sex marriage that is a human right and you can't discriminate against that so the court really leads the way right right right yeah you know they're kind of opposed to doing that so now it's just me ok we've got to you know we've got to go to all the other states that right now gay marriage is illegal in and you know get that passed so you become more than just a comment if you're an activist in this fight yeah i would assume so i mean it's

kind of what my my role has become my i view my role is speaking out about stuff writing you know writing pieces and hopefully trying to make people aware that if you don't have empathy if you don't have equality in your society your society is flawed it will not stand the test of time because every other civilization in history has failed every civilization has collapsed and it's either conflict from within you've oppressed a segment of your own population or you seek out conflict with someone else. and you get into a fight you can't win did you get any hostility from anyone over what use you wrote a couple twitter comments but you know that's that's the internet that's to be expected the vast majority of twitter comments were very positive and then in the locker room i had probably forty forty five percent of the guys said we may not agree with you on same sex rights but we appreciate you speaking out for brendan and then the other fifty five sixty percent said we think you did the right thing you know great job writing that letter. what's your reputation around locker rooms you know. i am who i always have been. yeah the nerdy guy who who will

talk about video games and paint miniatures in the locker room and you know and i've always been me but when i'm in the football locker room i don't i don't try to preach to guys i don't try to make them uncomfortable situations because i'm there to play football that's that's my job now if they want to have a conversation i'm perfectly willing to have a conversation but they're going to have to initiate it in the locker room because again i'm there to play football what's life like brought to the world because dolphin football i'm a lot of punters great front room guy with the raiders yelling to the greatest point to ever live who was a first round draft pick the first pick in the draft. should be in the hall of fame . first pick first round first pick. punters are unique people you do you feel part of the team i mean you you only go into certain situations yeah. i think especially with the way the n.f.l. is now every position is a specialized position you know you don't have the days where guys are playing oftens and defense anymore you don't have guys who play multiple positions so as

punters we're not out on the field as much as the other guys but when we do go out you know we can have just as much an impact on the game it's important when else yeah it's very important you know you look at if you give up a punt return for a touchdown the stats say you lose the game seventy percent of the time regardless of anything else you're going to lose that game seventy percent of the time so it's a very important part of the game it's just one that you don't happen to see as much why did you not play scape. i actually did both in high school and then once you get into college it becomes more difficult to separate the two motions because you're taking off the grass instead of off the two inch block and high school and once again the n.f.l. . if you try to do both are going to blow your leg out because there's no one else to take the backup reps so you really have to focus on one of the other soccer players you wouldn't think would make great punters most and most of them are it's most are either soccer players or aussie rules football players if you want to be a pro early on yeah but first ocker baseball. was pretty good bass was in

mid to high eighty's in high school and then as a pitcher so you were drafted wall a tore my hamstring playing soccer my freshman year tore my a.c.l. playing football my sophomore year and then junior year i had a really good football season and at that point i was like well football is going to be the way to go when i was going on you almost never heard of hamstrings and one of the more of them now the smallest question was especially i think it's because guys are pushing their bodies more and more and we've discovered you know sports science guys are are more athletic now you know you have guys running so much faster now you're putting more stress on the body that muscles before you never really heard about now you can diagnose and know ok that's exactly what happened and really if you're pushing yourself past what your body can do which is you're perfectly capable of doing you're going to get those muscle tear in those muscle strains looking upon deserve ridges often unfair because you often want to take it out of bones of those who writes right so it's only a thirty eight point two sort of a forty six point how do you judge

a pointer to judge a punter you really need to look at hang time you need to look at location on the field where he puts the ball and you know how distance relates to that and the other the real problem is that you have to know what the coach wants the punter to do which is something you know a fan normally isn't going to get to know because they're not there on the sideline so in my case there were there were a bunch of games a bunch of years actually where the coaches. said we want you to kick it forty two yards high and force a fair catch because you know our coverage teams are struggling right now and so from my stats you know it it makes it look like a forty two yard punt was like oh he doesn't know how to punt but the coaches are happy because you're doing exactly what what they want you to do so so there's no need to kick away from that one guy has tried very simply exactly like will take a thirty five yard punt out of bounds if it means hester doesn't return it for a touchdown and and so you know people look at that and they only look at the numbers they don't look at the circumstances surrounding those numbers are you thinking about where you're going to do after i wrote a book i mean what do you want to be

a writer you have you can all you want to be i would like to be a writer i think that would be a lot of fun and i've discovered i really enjoy writing and i think there's a lot of stuff to say and my my philosophy has always been an approach life one day at a time and whatever i'm going to do i'm going to do to the best of my ability so it's worked out so far the desire under-appreciated all i think they are just simply because it's such a specialized skill in a sport of specialized skills that people don't really care that much about it and and honestly it's more exciting for the vast majority of people to see someone make a diving catcher you know a great tackle or you know a quarterback to rifle a pass and then i don't blame them for that in sport there are certain as approaches sport with probably profession that part of the proportion is considered weird closer in baseball right most of that mind it was a pitch warning we comes up what's the monies that of the punter it's very similar in that you know you're only going to have like four or five plays to do your job

you're not like the normal office or defense where you're going to get you know thirty one thirty two thirty three plays over the course of again so you have to make sure you're on point every single time because you can't make up for it over the rest of the game you know one one bad punt out of five is much different than one bad play out of thirty three. coming up he's funny you can't even a bit twisted going to go inside the mind of who's right after this. one of the greats a spade blind to what is happening in their country. the american dream is disappearing . the houses with gardens are laid out the poor are left hopeless the streets are full of angry crowns that are fighting against. heights who stole the american dream. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else you hear or see some other part of it and realized everything you thought you

knew you don't know i'm tom harkin welcome to the big picture. the worst year for those. white house super the. radio guy. because you never seen anything like this i'm told. the new york times calls him the most interesting man in the n.f.l. mother jones said chris kluwe is a glimmering sparkle pony of candor and not afraid to die fearlessly into the marriage equality debate as well as

a lot of you know we always outspoken yeah always outspoken mainly my friends and family and really it's with the rise of social media that you know the message started to take off. like hundred seventy three thousand and we have two million six yet although you give me a bump you know. ok one of you tweeted out against his someone against peyton manning vincent. jackson drew brees in regards to the end of those collective bargaining agreements referring to them as instituting once again grieve is the operative word you also publicly said the n.f.l. for the lockout what was your gripe with. the great there was the fact that during the lockout the n.f.l. brought a suit you know on behalf of the players in order to say that you know hey you can't lock us out this is this is illegal and once the suit was close to being settled once we were close to finishing the lockout. drew brees macon's in the midst of jackson it was reported that they were asking for essentially

a ten million settlement for each of them you know for having their names on the suit and to me i was like wait a minute that's kind of greedy you're supposed to be representing everyone in the n.f.l. you know all the players and there were seven other guys signed on to that suit who aren't asking for anything and and really the thing was is that their their idea was they had gotten kind of screwed over by free agency during the you know the uncapped year and so they they wanted to get recuperation there was no they no no responses but they dropped the ten million request i mean again for me it's an issue of basic fairness is that everyone you know should be should be equal and one should have the same opportunity your right turn and she would you serious you tackle gun control in free speech. and you strongly for gun control yeah it's it will in the in the real issue right now in this country is that we can't even have a discussion about gun control it's either you know one side views the other is all guns all the time we can't have anything else the other side is you're going to take everything away we can't ever have guns you know no other option and the truth is you have to be able to talk about this you have to be able to talk about the

fact that there is rising levels of gun violence in the united states and and that the people who create guns have a vested interest in selling you guns in they are funding legislators to make sure and i raise it right exactly they're making sure that they want guns available and we have to be able to talk about the fact that do we really want all these guns in our country i mean there are legitimate uses for guns for hunting purposes. you know for a family heirloom you agreed with the second amendment refers to the militia makes it a bill issue was a group of people who got together to defend themselves. difficult to interpret. you could debate that amendment all day long what were they talking about and we can interview jefferson right exactly in my thing is and i said in the book is that the second amendment is obsolete at this point they wrote the second amendment at a time when you had muzzle loading muskets and canute's and there's a huge difference between a muzzle loading cannon and an assault rifle or a bushmaster an automatic shotgun and and the other thing is if the government

wants to oppress you have tanks and they have drones. title one right right exactly if we're really talking about the second amendment i should be entitled to have a drone and drop hellfire missiles on someone and if they were serving only if they weren't referring only to the militia one mentioned militia were not just the right to have guns right right exactly and it's really the idea that you're trying to keep the government from oppressing the population but in the current age that we're in in order to keep the government from oppressing the population you have to educate the people who will be in that government as to why it's a bad idea to do that as a proponent of free speech sometimes it's very hard to be i'm a proponent to push you have to back up lol deeds right yeah yeah yeah exactly how do you deal with a paula deen who has a right to free speech but we have a right to take away his right exactly and so the thing is is the right to free speech is also the right to suffer the consequences of that speech if you say something that you know society does not approve of and ideally society doesn't

approve of it because it's discriminatory against someone or it's you know bringing someone else down then that's your own fault you need to judge your own actions and say is this something that other people you know are are they going to be treated equally we can't do is stop you from say right exactly you can you can say whatever you want but you have to accept the consequences of what it is that when you bring up the argument against free she where you can say fire in a theater. and instead. yeah you are just going to tell us the red carpet for the no one runs from the theater it happens to you you know what have you heard from readers how it was you've been munition reaction to this book oh it's been really really positive people are really enjoying it i have had quite a few people say they should they should teach it in schools speak the language might be a little bit of an issue there but i would i would love for that to be a case of the case you have life lessons right yes yes i have a lot of crying is only fun when someone pays attention yeah exactly it's a i learned that from my children you know you see your children and you see him fall over and they've quickly look around like is anyone looking at me if you don't

look at them they don't cry. it's the same with a lot of adults you know they they they bump their head or do something stupid and if you don't look at him they don't cry but with facebook now everyone has to look at them so they cry. do you enjoy would you become well yes i do i mean i'm me. i like being me and i think one of the things in the book that i try and show is that we try to define someone as just a label as just one facet of who they are you really miss out on everything else that goes into them and you know whether that's just a football player or just a gay person or just a talk show host or you know just anything then everything else that goes into them you've essentially put that to the side and human beings are complex creatures you can't do that you can't define someone by just one label julia i did i did i really enjoyed it there telephone yes yes grew up in southern california it was far enough away from my parents where they couldn't bug me if i didn't want them to close enough where i could bug them if i wanted to it was perfect what would you want to be all them other than the punter actually and never really wanted to be

a punter i was looking back through some old writings that my my mom had dug out of the closet and there was an essay in there from sixth grade where i said i want to be a professional soccer or baseball player i don't understand why people would play football what's the joy in throwing a dead. ironically you know you know i'm kicking the dead pig around have you been to many camp. not yet the raiders mini camp starts july twenty fourth we just finished our we had an early can of right yeah you had o.t. a's and oh yeah the mantra mini camp starts all camp starts july twenty four u. the ponder of the challenges there's a challenger it's me and market king he's the other guy we're competing for the slot and it's essentially me the best man in the book is beautifully unique squawk zero ponies right there how's the family reacted to this good good day my wife is very proud that i wrote a book on not so proud about some of the pictures. you have picked better pictures of you so maybe pictures yeah i threw up i tried to find the most embarrassing

pictures i could because growing up i was the nerdy kid with thick glasses and we were you know i was i was i was always reading a book and yeah i mean that's still one of my my favorite hobbies is just to read play video games and football helps fund all that one of the glasses contacts contacts and then lasik i got to do it yeah i did the lasik as you right away right now yet was the one i got up early my corneas were too thin so they had to do where they centrally scrub your eyeball with a steel wire brush. so i took a couple weeks me where it was. all right we have some social media questions for you ok david on twitter asks what's your take on the aaron hernandez murder case on i think it's a shame because you know obviously he has such great potential and you know he's entitled the presumption of innocence before guilt but with everything that's been shown you know it really is that something the n.f.l. tries to talk to players about is that once you make it to this level if you have bad influences in your past you know if there are people you no longer want to associate with don't associate with him because he just you have too much to lose

you know they were troubles about him close they've got to be for sure. yeah you suppose you sort of rise the patriots kind of without a trial no i mean this is this is one where you know the negative publicity to you know really outweighs the fact that maybe potentially he gets off the shameful on twitter i want to know should penalties be stiffened in the n.f.l. for drug abuse for drug abuse on depend. what kind of drugs are we talking about it we talk about street drugs or talking about. steroids because there are two different tests in the n.f.l. so the roys is what yes the steroids is random testing all year round that it feels really you know really wants to catch their word use very very small right and street drugs is once a year kind of an annual test in between it's like may and july marijuana right right marijuana coke meth whatever it's you believe as well as they were used in the film i think there's some just because of the way you know just some guys are built you look at him in college and then you look at him in the pros and there's you know a huge jump in muscle mass and that's you know that's tough to do randi dilemma for

play at o'hare you want to be a pro you want to make some money but here you're a guard you wait two thirty we made you a gracious yeah exactly and it's one these days it's like three twenty or three thirty what do you do with that dilemma and it's really it's weighing ok the risk of being caught versus how much money i could potentially make and you know it's that's that's a tough equation we're going to play a little game because if you only knew that i guess this chris kluwe of the oakland raiders remember your first kiss i do who worship her name was kimberly and it was the senior last last dance of senior like going away night or whatever it was you know what group my senior year in high school so i took great weight of the time telling me i was the nerdy kid with glasses that urged his you see your high school was the first kiss what happened to kimberly she moved to oklahoma the next day. never really heard from her again what was the distance of your first pro punt

first of all i actually know that it was sixty yards beyond yeah it was we were lined up on the forty ahead and about fifty yards in the air and it bounced in the end zone we were playing it was in minnesota in the metrodome i don't remember who we were playing but i kicked that because you think you get indoors yes much easier you don't whenever the wind affects your drop it can really play havoc with with your kicker. turns and you have come up with. us. there seems to be the most popular although i used one last night that i was fairly proud of it was syphilitic house helper i like. biggest pet peeve biggest. actually ignorance willful ignorance to be specific i do not like people who don't take the opportunity to educate themselves especially when you have so many opportunities to do so favorite person to follow on twitter. i'm going to go with either brandon mccarthy or tom crabtree mccarthy's a pitcher for the arizona diamondbacks no three is a tight end for the buccaneers both really really funny guys follow the craziest

fan encounter craziest fan encounter i had i had someone ask me to sign a guitar hero controller back in minnesota that was entertaining and i've had a fan give me a dream catcher that was that was pretty cool where you go in oakland. is going to say we've got training camp coming up the most embarrassing moment. probably any time i shank the ball fifteen yards in front of millions of people watching his fans in the end of zero toughest fans. got to be chicago chicago fans are very brutal although i haven't the one time we played in philly it was kind of muted it was that tuesday night game because they were worried about the snowstorm but i've heard philly fans can be really really cool cure for cancer yes exactly. biggest misconception about punters. the locker room doesn't like us. that's a misconception that's a misconception i'd say you know the vast majority of us get along very well with with everyone else on the team best part about being a professional athlete salaries not. just being able to have the free time to

do what you want with your life as well as the resources to make that happen and hopefully more guys use that in a positive way. biggest funniest teammate you played with funny teammate probably jared allen he's he's a pretty funny dude thank you very much very very much appreciate our guest has been chris cooley the book is beautifully unique. sparkle ponies i love that title in stores everywhere and you can find me on twitter at kings things i'll see you next.

it is easy to. shoot easy. to. see. the law. i was a new alert and a patient scripts scare me a little. movement. there is breaking news tonight and they are continuing to follow the breaking news into. the alexander family cry hears a noise at a great thing rather than. be ever read or get

a court of law frowned on lads here's a story many sort of movie is playing out in real life. let me let me i want to know what all let me ask you a question. here on this network is what round in the day we have our knives out of. the group is this right to spend staying there or get here in a situation where b. and i don't agree to talk about the surveillance. oh i. do live on one hundred thirty three bucks a month for food i should try it because you know how fabulous bad luck i'm so skinny i mean. i know it as i'm sitting. really messed up. in the

old story of. the. worst were to live a long life out of a. radio guy and. i want. to give you never seen anything like this i'm telling. you guys i'm having martin and this is breaking the set so in light of the leaks from edward snowden and developments around and as a spine it's inspired many current former government officials to come out and save their pizza why they think snowden is a traitor a law breaker and the like amidst all the insane rhetoric a former u.s. president has come out and shattered the regurgitated talking points shedding some sanity on the issue by late few weeks ago former president jimmy carter told c.n.n. .