Anybody catch this on BBC3? Check it out on iPlayer.

 

It was very amatuer, but raised some interesting points. As a hetro, and a massive football fan I'd like to know what a lot of people thought. Personally I thought it wasn't very well produced, and in my mind the girl had already made up her mind before she conducted research. I've no doubt in my mind that football will change, but it will be 10-15 years time and not 1-5 years time.

 

She was slightly obsessed with a Premier League footballer coming out aswell. Quite naive imo, not going to happen for a long time, especially an English footballer.

It was an interesting programme although obviously made on a low budget. It was disappointing that Joey Barton was the only Premier League player willing to speak to the programme. Rio Ferdinand was mentioned as one of those who declined to appear. With his record of speaking out against racism I would have hoped he would have been prepared to speak against homophobia as well. Of course there may have been a perfectly valid reason why he couldn't do it.

 

There will eventually be openly gay players in the Premier League but I'm not sure how long it will take. It may need several players to come out at once. Alternatively it may need a popular player to do it, perhaps with a fellow player (preferably someone with a bit of a hard man reputation) to say something along the lines of "I've known he's gay for ages. So what? It makes no difference. He's a mate and that's all there is to it."

Homophobia is still the massive elephant in the room as far as football is concerned, it's very disappointing that when you have these initiatives to stop racism in the game that there really isn't anything similar to try and combat homophobia. I'm afraid as long as this situation exists, many people are going to continue to see football as being this "macho" thing and it will continue to be a turn-off for them... Shame, because the gay community is a pretty solid market to tap into economically...

See I disagree. Homophobia is not just a problem in football, its a problem in all sports. How many gay sportsmen/women have actually come out? Not many. And I'm sure Gareth Thomas came out after he had retired. Football still has a lot of problems, but stuff like "we can see you holding hands" is just harmless banter. Just like clubs sing "whats that coming over the hill, is it the taxman" to clubs in financial difficulties. As with all football chants, there is an uglier side. But they're thankfully in the minority.

 

People are fixated on a top star coming and out and saying he's gay - it's career suicide for a player. As soon as it happens and especially if they are the only one to come out, they will be made a public figure by Gay Rights people and shown as a benchmark. I don't think any footballer player wants this, they just want to play football. Look at Justin Fashanu, he had a fairly modest playing career, but will always be known for being the first openly gay footballer.

See I disagree. Homophobia is not just a problem in football, its a problem in all sports. How many gay sportsmen/women have actually come out? Not many. And I'm sure Gareth Thomas came out after he had retired. Football still has a lot of problems, but stuff like "we can see you holding hands" is just harmless banter. Just like clubs sing "whats that coming over the hill, is it the taxman" to clubs in financial difficulties. As with all football chants, there is an uglier side. But they're thankfully in the minority.

 

People are fixated on a top star coming and out and saying he's gay - it's career suicide for a player. As soon as it happens and especially if they are the only one to come out, they will be made a public figure by Gay Rights people and shown as a benchmark. I don't think any footballer player wants this, they just want to play football. Look at Justin Fashanu, he had a fairly modest playing career, but will always be known for being the first openly gay footballer.

 

How many lesbians have we had in tennis? A fair few. And no one really batted an eyelid tbh...

 

How many lesbians have we had in tennis? A fair few. And no one really batted an eyelid tbh...

 

How many gay male players are there though? It's swings and roundabouts. Just imagine if a gay England football player came out. Times would be hard enough in his own country, let alone when he visited the likes of Eastern Europe on international duty.

See I disagree. Homophobia is not just a problem in football, its a problem in all sports. How many gay sportsmen/women have actually come out? Not many. And I'm sure Gareth Thomas came out after he had retired. Football still has a lot of problems, but stuff like "we can see you holding hands" is just harmless banter. Just like clubs sing "whats that coming over the hill, is it the taxman" to clubs in financial difficulties. As with all football chants, there is an uglier side. But they're thankfully in the minority.

 

People are fixated on a top star coming and out and saying he's gay - it's career suicide for a player. As soon as it happens and especially if they are the only one to come out, they will be made a public figure by Gay Rights people and shown as a benchmark. I don't think any footballer player wants this, they just want to play football. Look at Justin Fashanu, he had a fairly modest playing career, but will always be known for being the first openly gay footballer.

I agree, it's a problem that faces all sports. Swimming has a minuscule amount of openly LGBT athletes, I can only know of 2 maybe 3.

 

Rugby and Athletics also have very few openly gay sportsmen/women.

For some reason, some people are willing to fight against racism but not homophobia. Heck, there are black people who are homophobes, which to be is just mindblowing - so you'll discriminate against others when your own race is fighting against discrimination? And there are many of them actually, in that Prop 8 legislation, the people who were most against homosexual marriage were black women, followed by black men. The least were white males. Interesting nonetheless.