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The new football season maybe underway but some attitudes don't seem to evolve anything like as fast as the rules of the game itself.
Homophobia, biphobia and transphobia are still too widespread in top flight football - indeed, too widespread in many different sports.
The Football Association itself continues to embrace and celebrate the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBTQ+) community but they reluctantly accept that there is still more to do to stop the discriminatory abuse that many LGBTQ+ players and fans experience. Groups and individuals tackling homophobia, biphobia and transphobia in the game engage regularly and established lobby groups like Stonewall, coupled with the emergence of a vibrant fans movement consisting of LGBTQ+ groups linked to professional clubs, means there is more visibility around this area than ever before. There is however still no out gay footballer in the Premier League, or English Football League. There are only six known gay professional footballers worldwide, only two of whom play for top-division clubs in their countries. | |
Football v Homophobia
| Football v Homophobia began in the UK before developing into an international initiative. They challenge discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity and expression at all levels in football from grassroots to professional clubs. 2024 Champions include Leicester City, Watford, QPR, Leyton Orient & Colchester Utd in England, Wrexham in Wales and Rangers in Scotland. |
Football v Homophobia engages in campaigning, education, advice and guidance,
research, policy consultation and capacity building to:
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Rainbow Laces
| Campaigns designed to raise awareness of this issue have caught the public’s imagination in recent years. This is the 11th year of their Rainbow Laces campaign which focuses on promoting acceptance of lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans (LGBTQ+) footballers, with professional and non-League clubs donning rainbow coloured laces. |
Research carried out for Stonewall's Rainbow Laces campaign shows that:
To make sport everyone's game we need to come together to show that we support LGBT fans and players - as fans, players, clubs, leagues, governing bodies and sponsors. Since Rainbow Laces kicked off in 2013, over a million people have laced up in support of LGBTQ+ inclusion in sport, fitness and physical activity. | |
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So can homophobia ever be kicked out of sport? OutUK's Adrian Gillan asks
Out for Sport, Stonewall FC midfielder Marc Short (right) and a former Sport England supremo if openly gay
people in sport will always be segregated, playing in gay-only teams or in a queer
league of their own.
"I dislike the term 'segregated' in relation to gay sport," says Out for Sport (OFS) chief Ivan Bussens. "I prefer to think of LGB sports clubs offering a safe and welcoming environment for people who may be gay. Additionally, these clubs encourage participation in healthy lifestyles and particularly in the 'gay community' so often seen through an alcoholic haze at smokey nightclubs." | 
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OFS is a volunteer-run umbrella group which offers LGB sports clubs and individuals the opportunity to cooperate and share experiences, and aims to become a representative body for LGB sport in the London Region. In the past, OFS has facilitated the joint organisation of multi-sport events such as the Sydney Gay Games - organising opening ceremony team tops for everyone under the 'OFS GB' banner - and has helped some sports clubs to successfully access government grant aid. Continues Bussens: "The benefits to well-being of participation in sport are well known. These benefits are particularly important to people that may be living with HIV. LGB sports clubs offer everything a 'mainstream' equivalent would - plus a support structure more suited to like minded people." "But LGB sports people in the UK are not always excluded from mainstream, integrated amateur sports," he insists. "Exclusion - due a lack of suitable education, information and role models - all depends on the relative enlightenment of the particular sports club and how the 'out' individual presents themselves." But any possible limited acceptance within amateur sport seems not to translate into the professional world. Apart from Jake Daniels there are pretty much no 'out' pro sports stars in the UK, and only a small number of examples from overseas. It's true that footballer Thomas Beattie also came out, but that was only after he moved away from the sport and became a businessmen. | |
| Ivan Bussens goes on to explain more: "There are people like Canadian swimmer and Olympic gold medallist Mark Tewksbury and Australian Rugby League player Ian Roberts. Their main problem has been - as with Navratilova and other lesbian tennis stars - that coming out is likely to adversely affect their income due to what sponsors at least perceive as adverse media and public reaction." |  Canadian swimmer and Olympic gold medallist Mark Tewksbury is one of the few pro athletes who've said they're gay. Photo courtesy www.portugalgay.pt |
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The Gay Games, which OFS is involved in, is in fact open to all sexual persuasions
and welcomes a small number or straight entrants, so it cannot be described as
segregated. But would the endgame surely be for LGB sports folk to become so accepted
within mainstream sport, amateur and professional, that the Games - and OFS - become
redundant?
Says Bussens: "Like OFS, the Gay Games is a movement which is trying to effect a change towards the broader acceptance of LGB people through participation and inclusion in sport. Ultimately, a shift may occur where there is such widespread acceptance of LGBT people that the need for the Gay Games, and us, will cease to exist - until then I believe the both are valid." | |