USWNT’s Harris blasts Hinkle as “homophobic”

U.S. women’s national team member Ashlyn Harris took to social media to address Jaelene Hinkle, who declined a chance to play for the U.S. team in 2017 because she said her Christian beliefs wouldn’t allow for her to wear jerseys designed to honor members of the LGBTQ community.

“Hinkle, our team is about inclusion,” Harris wrote on Twitter. “Your religion was never the problem. The problem is your intolerance and you are homophobic.”

Harris, a goalkeeper who is engaged to teammate Ali Krieger, was reacting to a 2018 video from the Christian Broadcasting Network. “I just felt so convicted in my spirit that it wasn’t my job to wear this jersey,” Hinkle — a Denver native who starred at Valor Christian High School — says in the video clip.

The video was shared Monday by a Twitter user who wrote that the U.S. team was apparently “not a very welcoming place for Christians.”

“Don’t you dare say our team is ‘not a welcoming place for Christians,’ ” Harris wrote in her tweets.

Appearing to then address Hinkle again, Harris wrote: “You weren’t around long enough to know what this team stood for. This is actually an insult to the Christians on our team. S(h)ame on you.”

Harris and Krieger are among several openly gay members of the team. The U.S. team also has players who have shared their Christian faith, including Julie Ertz, Alyssa Naeher, Tobin Heath, Morgan Brian and Allie Long.

In 2015, after the Supreme Court ruled that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marriage, Hinkle posted a lengthy note to Instagram.

“I believe with every fiber in my body that what was written 2,000 years ago in the Bible is undoubtedly true,” she wrote. “It’s not a fictional book. It’s not a pick and choose what you want to believe.”

Two years later, Hinkle declined a callup to the national team for a pair of friendlies against Sweden and Norway for “personal reasons.” The U.S. uniforms for those games featured rainbow jersey numbers to honor the LGBTQ community.