Lawrence Taylor and the Crisis of Masculine Leadership
Recently, former NFL linebacker Lawrence Taylor was appointed to the President’s Council on Sports, Fitness, and Nutrition. “LT” was a menace on the field, but off the field, he’s become a different kind of menace all together. In 2010, he was convicted of buying sex from a trafficked teenager. That’s not an opinion, it's public record.
Now we’re watching him elevated to a national leadership role meant to inspire youth and promote health. I think it’s time we had a hard conversation about what kind of men we look up to in this country, and why.
Buying a Girl Isn’t Just a “Mistake”
In 2010, Lawrence Taylor was arrested after paying $300 to have sex with a 16-year-old girl who had been trafficked and beaten by her pimp. He admitted in court that he “should have known” she was underage. He pleaded guilty to two misdemeanors and was given probation. But this wasn’t a one-time lapse in judgment. It was willful participation in a business system where children and other vulnerable people are treated as commodities. This is not the kind of leadership we need. Not in our homes. Not in our locker rooms, and certainly not on a national council that’s supposed to inspire and protect youth.
We Don’t Need Powerful Men - We Need Better Men
By most standards, LT is a man’s man; big, powerful, and successful at playing a game many Americans celebrate with worshipful devotion. But he’s also a registered sex offender. Are we seriously willing to give a Hall of Fame pass rusher a pass, just because his misdeeds are old news? Is this the model of masculinity we really want to hold up in front of young boys trying to pass a presidential fitness test? What kind of men do we want them to become? More importantly, is this the kind of masculinity we want our girls to grow up contending with?
Sex trafficking doesn’t exist without a demand for paid sexual access to another person’s body, and men, whether professional athletes, pastors, teachers, CEOs, or working-class dads, are overwhelmingly the source of that demand. I’m not saying this to shame anyone, but because confronting this reality is the first step to actual change. Ironically, it’s sex trafficking survivors themselves who have told me that men need healing, and I believe that to be true, but before there can be healing, there must be a reckoning. As long as we continue to ignore the role men play in driving the demand that leads to sex trafficking, future generations of vulnerable women, boys, girls, and LGBTQ youth will pay the price.
Manly Work
At Epik Project, we know a lot of men who have done great harm by participating in this exploitative ecosystem. Some of them are doing the hard, humble work of making it right, of telling the truth, learning to listen, and living differently.
This is not that.
This is yet another example of a toxic cultural habit of rewarding power while ignoring character; of excusing male sexual entitlement, especially when it’s dressed up in celebrity and nostalgia.
We need men who are willing to challenge this script. We need men who are willing to say: We can do better. Because while masculinity isn’t inherently toxic, it can be weaponized, especially when we refuse to question who we admire and why.
What Kind of Men Are We Becoming?
Ultimately, though, this moment isn’t really about Lawrence Taylor. It’s about the rest of us. It’s about becoming the kind of men who are unwilling to look the other way when another man’s past is inconvenient, even if he wears the sacred golden blazer from Canton. It’s about being the kind of men our sons and daughters can trust to know the difference between true leadership - the kind that’s earned through character, integrity, and service - and the faux leadership that too often accompanies celebrity status and little else.
I want to invite men to sit in the uncomfortable tension of these questions; to face their own shadows, to take responsibility for doing the hard work of becoming better men. I want to call men to protect, uplift, and disrupt the harm heaped on vulnerable people every day. Because God knows we don’t need more celebrities to prop up and declare as leaders for no other reason than they won a couple of trophies nearly half a century ago. We need truly heroic, humble, and safe men, the kind who don’t need a presidential appointment but who exert life-giving leadership every day and everywhere. Let’s be those men.
