The San Francisco Giants players who wrote Biblical verses on their hats launched an attack on Pride month and the LGBTQ+ community, selectively quoting verses in their attempt to impose their beliefs.

That’s what you might think if you followed some of the media coverage of the controversy involving several members of the Giants who declined to participate in Pride month, or who staged a quiet protest.

They “defaced their uniforms” said one columnist. They tried “to hijack the event,” she later added.

They “missed the point” with their “tone-deaf response,” another columnist wrote.

They had “weaponiz[ed]” Christianity “for an anti-LGBTQ agenda out of pure spite and nasty politics,” said another.

Let’s get one thing clear: Not one of these players set out to cause a fuss. All of them were reacting to something they had been forced to express when they were told to wear a rainbow “Pride” hat.

The team forced these Christian players to say something that violated their deeply held religious beliefs. And so several of them asserted those beliefs in the most tasteful way possible: by citing Biblical verses about the origin of the rainbow, which is now seen as a symbol of the LGBTQ+ movement.

They are tolerant toward others. They just ask the same in return.

Traditional Christian faith follows the Biblical teaching that God created man and woman, and that homosexuality is morally problematic.

That is not the final word on the subject. Not in San Francisco, and not in America.

The First Amendment to the US Constitution declares that Congress shall establish no law making any one religion, or religion in general, the law of the land.

But the First Amendment also protects freedom of religion. And Congress has taken special care to make sure that religious freedom is upheld.

The rainbow is supposed to include every color. But a rainbow only appears when light is refracted through water, and splits into its separate wavelengths.

A rainbow can be a sign of division, as well as a sign of unity.

It need not be that way. We need to make sure that tolerance extends to Christians as well.

The baseball players who stood up for their beliefs showed the true meaning of pride.

They are giants of faith, who have reminded us of our nation’s deepest founding values — which we should all share, regardless of where we are on the rainbow.