Arsenal’s Gay Gooners are like any other football supporters’ club. They hold meetups before home fixtures, gather to watch away games and organise regular social events to “complain about the referees”.
But unlike most football fan groups, since they were founded in 2013 the Gay Gooners have been campaigning to kick homophobia out of football and make the sport a place where LGBT supporters can feel accepted.
“We have to be seen and noticed” – Gay Gooners chairman
“Because we want to play our part in tackling homophobia, biphobia and transphobia, we have to do things publicly. There’s no point doing them secretly. We have to be seen and noticed so that we become normalised as part of the football community,” says Dave Raval, a dedicated Arsenal fan and chairman of Gay Gooners.
At the outset of the 2013-2014 season, Arsenal was the first club in Europe to drape a rainbow banner over one of the hoardings inside its stadium. Members of the Gay Gooners also march at London Pride every year and maintain a big presence on social media. Their message is clear, that LGBT fans should be part of the Arsenal community, and that their presence should be normalised.
The club is now home to 775 members, making it the largest LGBT supporters’ group in Britain. Around 40 per cent of its members are women, and around 10 per cent live overseas, sometimes in countries where it’s illegal to be gay.
Joe White, Campaigns Officer for the Gay Gooners, says he wouldn’t have felt confident enough to attend matches both home and away without groups like the Gay Gooners.
“The support and community of LGBT+ fans groups provides a reassurance to fans that they are not alone and the visibility of our groups is slowly changing attitudes within the game, both in the terraces and within the professional side of the game.”
Football has yet to see a single openly gay Premier League footballer
Yet the very existence of Gay Gooners illustrates that homophobia remains a significant enough problem in football that fans need support and representation. Even in 2019, there are no openly gay Premier League football players. Dave admits there’s still a lot to tackle when it comes to homophobia in football and that “people do still shout out homophobic abuse at football stadiums”.
Figures from anti-discrimination charity Kick It Out suggest that homophobic abuse at football matches is continuing to rise. Last year’s statistics showed there were 111 reports of homophobic abuse incidents around football matches in the 2017/18 season, a 9 percent increase from the previous report.
When Premier League football teams including Arsenal, Manchester United and Chelsea showed solidarity with Stonewall’s pro-LGBT Rainbow Laces campaign last December, a campaign attempting to kick out homophobia in football, they received thousands of homophobic responses on social media.
Dave believes that rising hate crime in football is a reflection of the surge in hate incidents across society. “It’s evidence of the poison and the hate across society around the EU referendum time,” he says. “In football reported incidents of racism have definitely increased. We can’t prove that homophobic abuse has gone up but anecdotally that has as well.
Group says football has power to influence society
“Football fans reflect society, but we also have the opportunity to use the power of football to influence society.”
When it comes to tackling homophobia, Dave believes that visibility is key. “The laws and the Ground Grading regulations, and all that sort of stuff, are all in the right place. What needs to change now is hearts and minds, and that’s part of what we do.”
The football community is realising that, because we wouldn’t accept racism in the stands, we shouldn’t tolerate homophobia. “Overcoming homophobia in football is a journey, and we’ve started much more recently than anti-racist campaigns.
“It’s about removing the idea that homophobic abuse is banter, just as racist abuse isn’t banter.
“If I shout out something homophobic in the Emirates stadium I want other people in the stadium to stand up and shout ‘What! I’m offended by the fact you’re saying that!’.
“It’s about getting to the point where this is embedded within culture and within the football family and people’s hearts and minds have changed.”
You can follow Gay Gooners on twitter @gaygooners
