Football vs. Homophobia: What more can be done?
Charles Hague-Jones chats to Jon Holmes, a campaigner trying to improve things for LGBTQ+ players and fans.
Transcript
00:00 Football v Homophobia exists to challenge discrimination based on sexual orientation,
00:07 gender identity and expression at all levels in football. As an international initiative FVH
00:14 engages in campaigning, education, advice and research to make existing football structures
00:20 safe, welcoming and inclusive for the LGBT community. This is an opportunity for clubs
00:26 at a grassroots level to access some of that learning and to help to create kind of more
00:32 inclusive and welcoming environments at their own clubs. There's been some new data that's
00:37 been produced by Just Eat which is helping to you know create the campaign and what that shows is
00:44 that actually there is a real willingness from grassroots football clubs to be more welcoming
00:49 to LGBT+ people to come and join their environments and to access that but there's obviously a lot of
00:56 trepidation from the side of people in the LGBT community who don't necessarily expect these places
01:01 to be that safe or that inclusive for people from those backgrounds. I found it interesting how the
01:09 campaign also targets levels at the game that aren't advertised and get millions of viewers
01:15 every single week. After all football all starts from a grassroots level so does this make it then
01:22 more important? What this program is going to do is going to give access to a couple of
01:28 representatives from those clubs who will be able to come along to a free kind of virtual session,
01:32 understand a lot more about language and terminology and behaviours and all those
01:38 kind of different elements that help to make LGBTQ+ people feel a bit more welcome.
01:42 A new beast has taken over some sports with their oil money and millions of supporters,
01:50 that being Middle Eastern countries whose laws are strictly against homosexuality.
01:56 So how are campaigns like Football v Homophobia challenging those countries
02:00 and the way they view the messages that these campaigns are trying to spread?
02:04 Sport goes to all different parts of the world as we saw as you mentioned at the Qatar World Cup
02:10 there was this kind of tension around how do we combat all forms of discrimination when you've
02:16 got countries that have anti-LGBTQ+ laws and I think we're seeing some kind of growing opposition
02:23 in different kind of parts of the world to understanding about these communities but here
02:27 at home I think sport has been a really pivotal force for social change to bring people from those
02:35 kind of different communities together. Hope and progress for the future therefore but in the here
02:43 and now there is still much work to be done to make football both here in the UK and all over
02:49 the world an inclusive place for all LGBTQ+ players and fans. This is something I'll be
02:56 finding out more about very soon as I speak with professional footballer Jake Daniels.