In May, David Saunders reported on a suburban Australian football game played to promote tolerance and understanding of gay and lesbian participation in sport. Next season, two pro teams, St Kilda and Sydney Swans, will play a pride-themed game for premiership points.
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Last week was a good one to be a fan of Australian Rules Football. As other codes around the world continue to spin their wheels, deliberating on whether to promote more socially inclusive behavior among their constituents or remain the impenetrable bastions of conservative masculinity they’ve traditionally been, the Australian Football League stole the march.
Australia’s indigenous code, the country’s most popular spectator sport, last week unveiled its game schedule for the 2016 season. Included is a round 21 clash between the St Kilda Saints and the Sydney Swans that will be themed as an LGBT pride game.
The announcement comes after lobbying by the clubs themselves who saw an opportunity to use the power of high profile athletes to promote greater tolerance of the gay and lesbian community on and off the sporting field.
Historic and important – proud we will host the inaugural Pride Match in Rd 21 vs @sydneyswans. #BeStKilda
— Matt Finnis (@Matt_Finnis) October 29, 2015
“The unfortunate reality is that research shows that LGBTI people don’t always feel welcome in sport,” Saints CEO Matt Finnis told The Age newspaper. “Research also shows higher levels of anxiety, mental illness and suicide rates particularly amongst younger people and that’s something which we should all be motivated to counter. For us this is just one small thing we think we can do to help turn that around.” Jason Ball Next year’s clash between St Kilda and Sydney is also due in no small way to the efforts of Jason Ball, a suburban league footballer whose announcement three years ago to his team mates at Yarra Glen Football Club in Melbourne’s semi-rural fringe that he was gay, led to the Pride Cup. Yarra Glen and opponents Warburton-Millgrove contested the cup for the second year, with the two teams donning rainbow-colored uniforms for the occasion, which was also actively promoted by the AFL. Since coming out in 2012, Ball, 27, has been propelled into the media spotlight, appearing on network television morning shows and talkback radio to promote the LGBT cause. He has become an effective advocate of gay and lesbian rights and has been instrumental in bringing the campaign to stamp out prejudice toward gay and lesbian athletes to mainstream Australia.
From little things big things grow: St Kilda and Sydney to play @AFL‘s first gay pride game https://t.co/7OodVzzuQy #PrideCup #AFLPride — Jason Ball (@greensjason) October 29, 2015
“This is the beginning of a new era of growth and diversity for the AFL. We have seen them take the lead in reaching out to women and multicultural communities, and reaching out to the LGBTI community is the next logical step in taking leadership on inclusion,” Ball, who’s now campaigning for a seat in federal politics for the left-of-center Greens party, told The Age. “I’m so proud that the work we did in Yarra Glen with the Pride Cup is now being replicated on the national stage.”
Ball acknowledges that a lot still needs to be done if next year’s game is going to have any long-term impact on the sporting community’s views about LGBT athletes.
“I think it will be more than token if St Kilda and Sydney and the AFL put some effort into education as part of the event,” Mr Ball told Melbourne radio talkback host Tom Elliott last week. “It’s one thing to whack a rainbow on the 50-meter line, but you have to make sure that you bring the community along with you and you actually talk about the challenges the gay and lesbian community faces in sport; how they can be addressed, how people can change their behavior and language to make sure those people don’t feel excluded.”
Meanwhile, in the NFL…
So, what about the rest of the sporting world? Are other major leagues going to follow the lead of the AFL and actively campaign to stamp out prejudice against the gay, lesbian and transgender community?
Don’t hold your breath. Whilst Major League Baseball franchises including the San Francisco Giants, Oakland Athletics, Chicago Cubs and Detroit Tigers incorporated “Pride Nights” into this year’s regular season, and Barcelona FC players starred in a video promoting tolerance and respect, genuine and substantial gestures for LGBT athletes from major sports remain few and far between.
In May, a spokesman for NFL told Good Men Project that whilst it would be supportive of any franchise that wished to promote in some way a pride-themed game, issues such as the relatively few home games during the regular season and the League’s uniform policy presented obstacles to staging such a contest. Consequently, it’s unlikely pro football teams in the US will get beyond possibly wearing pride-themed warm-up gear any time soon.
Still, as we know, the NFL has a lot on its plate right now. It, like most other (to be fair) major league male sporting bodies, is still trying to educate players that women are not simply objects for unsolicited sexual gratification or punching bags when the boozing and snorting is done.
Its form here is patchy. Last week, the League sent a mixed message when, as ESPN reported, Pittsburgh Steelers cornerback William Gay, whose mother was shot dead by her partner when Gay was seven, was fined almost $6,000 for wearing purple cleats to promote awareness of domestic violence.
The NFL also fined Gay’s teammate DeAngelo Williams the same amount for wearing “Find the Cure” in his eye black in honor of breast cancer awareness.
Until the League makes some inroads on the domestic violence front, one suspects the gay and lesbian sporting lobby may find it tough getting any traction with, or support from, the NFL.
Whatever they do, the LGBT community should probably try to make sure promoting their message for tolerance and fighting against prejudice doesn’t involve violating the sanctity of a football uniform. That would never do.
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Photo Credit: AAP
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