Homophobia and the World Cup a Retrospective
Football is not coming home; a reference that probably only English fans will get (sorry rest of the world). It was France who were victorious, so congratulations to the French football team. At the start of the competition I wrote an article about the World Cup being in Russia and how it effected gay football (soccer) fans. In the article I wrote about Russia being homophobic, the laws prevent LGBT people being allowed to display who they are in public. Not only that but homophobic football chats at Russian football grounds are rife. This led to gay football fans being concerned about going to the support their country. Now that the new season is about to start for football clubs I thought it would be a good chance to look back at the World Cup.
I watched a BBC documentary about a gay football fan who was struggling to make his mind up about going to the World Cup because of his sexuality. Talking to a friend they said that Russia want this tournament to go well so it would be safe for a gay man to go and they wouldn’t have to worry. From my research I can see that he was right, Russia did want it to go well and wouldn’t want any kind of negative press. Normal rules in Russia didn’t seem to apply during the competition.
At England games gay football fans took a Three Lions (England have three Lions on their badge) rainbow flag to hang up in the stadium. The rainbow flag is known to represent the LGBTQ community. Doing this would usually be against the law, it would be seen as promoting non traditional sexual relations. Taking the rainbow flag to the stadium was backed by the English FA. Di Cunningham, who despite being held before the game got the OK to head in to the stadium was allowed to display the flag. The flag was displayed at all England games, and apart from briefly being asked to take it down during the England vs Panama game by the authorities, it was allowed to stay.
Then there were a group of people who I think are heroes, people from Spain, the Netherlands, Brazil, Mexico, Argentina and Columbia who walked around together forming a rainbow flag. This was a deliberate act to get around the LGBTQ propaganda law that Russia has, they created a flag without the flag itself These people stood next to policeman, went to public places, went everywhere showing the rainbow flag in plain sight and the authorities could not or may not have realised that their was anything wrong.
There was homophobic chanting by Mexican fans, who’s FA were subsequently fined £7,600 and Argentina football association was fined £80,000 for homophobic chanting from the fans but this was also in part because if issues with the media conferences. This sounds great that there were fines for homophobic chanting, however when you consider that England were fined £50,000 for wearing the wrong socks, you think differently. Come on FIFA you can do better than this, you have already taken the World Cup to two anti LGBTQ countries and now you fine more for socks then for homophobic chanting? They are pushing the community away from football and this is not fair.
So overall the World Cup was relatively successful for LGBTQ fans in the fact that nothing horrendous happened. That is great but why should we even have to worry about going to the World Cup? Why is there doubt for fans in the community about being able to watch the thing that most straight people don’t even have to think about? It is not helped by the governing body of FIFA who from what I see do little to help.
Maybe I’m wrong and there is something going on in the background, well that background work needs to be brought to the forefront and we all need to know so that LGBT groups can see that we have not been forgotten about. We shouldn’t have to hide our flag through shirts and we shouldn’t have to worry about a flag being allowed in a stadium. We should be included, we should be equal like every other football fan.
So I’ll say it again, Come On FIFA pull your socks up, just make sure they aren’t the wrong ones.
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