Two years ago, journeyman pitcher Matt Dermody posted a tweet stating that “Homosexuals will not inherit the kingdom of God. They will go to hell. This is not my opinion but the #Truth. Read 1 Corinthians 6:9.”

Dermody took down the tweet. In a follow-up tweet, he wrote, “I am not a homophobic. As I stated in my tweet, I have love for all. The truth is love.”

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Until Wednesday, Dermody, 32, had been pitching at Triple-A Worcester. That’s about to change. The Red Sox have promoted him to the big leagues and plan to use him as their starting pitcher for Thursday’s series finale against the Cleveland Guardians. And that’s a major public relations mess for the Red Sox, who have long positioned themselves as allies of Boston’s LGBTQ+ community.

Talk about bad optics: On Saturday, Boston will stage its first Pride parade since 2019. And come next Tuesday the Red Sox will hold Pride Night at Fenway Park. In other words, the team is inviting the queer folks to come out to the ballpark and have a good time, and maybe even purchase one of those awesome rainbow-themed T-shirts from their “Pride Collection,” but please excuse the player on the team who believes you’re going to be cast to eternal damnation when you die.

The decision to promote Dermody to the big leagues was made by chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom. It was also Bloom who last winter signed Dermody, who has appeared in parts of four seasons in the big leagues with the Blue Jays and Cubs.

Whatever vetting process the Red Sox deployed before signing Dermody did not unearth the tweets. In fact, Bloom didn’t know about them until they were brought to his attention during spring training.

He immediately met with Dermody. Was he satisfied with the outcome of that meeting?

During a phone conversation late Wednesday night, Bloom told me, “I don’t think of it as something where you can be satisfied or not. The important thing to me in that conversation was he knew he made a mistake. He owned that mistake.

“He told me he realized he hurt people,” Bloom said. “He didn’t intend or want to hurt people, and he realized he did. That’s why he took it down. And he told me, ‘I know I shouldn’t use my platform that way.’”

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I was unable to set up an interview with Dermody Wednesday night.  And since he’s Boston’s starting pitcher Thursday night, it’s highly unlikely he’ll be made available before the game. Nor should he be.

But the question hanging in the air, then, is this: Is Dermody sorry he said “homosexuals” are going straight to hell, or is he sorry he posted the tweet?  It may turn out that Dermody sticks with his story that he’s merely stating what’s in the Bible. The verse he mentioned in his deleted tweet, Corinthians 6:9, reads as follows:

“Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither the immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor sexual perverts, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor robbers will inherit the kingdom of God.”

The point here isn’t that Dermody is citing the Bible, but that he’s being selective about it. We all have some familiarity with the long list of things people do that the Bible says we shouldn’t do; I needn’t cite them here. To do so devolves the discussion to a game of biblical gotcha. Suffice it to say Dermody is big on what the Bible says about sending people to hell, but apparently OK with playing a sport that plays a lot of games on the Sabbath.

For now, Bloom is satisfied with the answers he received from Dermody.

“If we had heard something different from him, obviously we’d be in a different place,” he said. “It was really important for us that he understood he made a mistake and he was clear with us that he did.”

Asked if he thinks Dermody still believes in what he tweeted, Bloom said, “I don’t want to speak for him. It’s not my place to speak for what he believes. Let him speak to that.”

Bloom did not say the team wouldn’t have signed Dermody had they come across the tweets. What he did say is that the team has since made changes to its vetting process.

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“We have a pretty robust process for checking background, and for checking social media,” he said. “Because the original tweet was deleted we didn’t know about it when we signed him … because of this, we’ve found some ways to make this process even more comprehensive, to tighten it up, to make sure if there is another player in this situation we know about it beforehand and talk about it with the player.”

Dermody is 2-2 with a 4.50 ERA in nine games with the WooSox, all but one of them starts. He has allowed 44 hits in 50 innings, and he has registered 47 strikeouts against just eight walks. It will be a surprise if he turns out to be a long-term fixture in Boston’s rotation.

If he sticks around, Dermody could be in uniform next Tuesday for Red Sox Pride Night. That’s going to be a tough sell.

But it’s not really Dermody with whom I have fault, even if it’d be nice if he could expand on his views about who’s going to hell, and why.

It’s the Red Sox who have bollixed this. They could have rolled Dernody out for a news conference in spring training and allowed him to express his views … clear the air … say what’s on his mind … maybe even apologize if he were of a mind to do so.

Instead, Matt Dermody is Boston’s special Pride Month surprise.

(Photo of Matt Dermody: Erica Denhoff / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

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