Homophobic Abuse In Football

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Here we are, living in twenty first century in Great Britain, one of the most diverse and accepting countries in the world, a place where people from all backgrounds and upbringings are largely accepted into their wider communities. Sounds like a nice place to me, but why if we as a nation really are all so accepting does our national sport, football, have no openly gay players participating in the higher divisions.
In fact you have to look as far down as the sixth tier of competition in the English football pyramid to find Britain’s only openly gay football player, 23 year old Liam Davis who plays for conference north side Gainsborough Trinity. (Alistair Magowan, 2014)
It is not as if there are no gay footballers out there, as of May 2013 there were …show more content…

(Scraton,S and Flintoff,A, 2002,p81)
There have been cases in other sports where athletes meet and partake in sporting activities in an aim to raise respect and understanding for homosexuality in sport. (Federation of Gay Games, 2014) Such events should be supported and could be a key into more homosexual athletes coming out.
Possibly the most important tool for the tackling of homophobic abuse in football is for any victims of homophobic abuse to speak out and tell their stories, however small or large scale the incident might be. This must also be backed up by any heterosexual witnesses, who should also try to maintain environments where there is no such thing as homophobic abuse. (Brown,1991, p.205)
Whist coming out as gay may seem a risk for many in a largely heterosexual society I believe the key to solving this problem is for more gay people to come out and share their stories.
There is a suggestion that gay sporting clubs and organisations helping to overcome prejudices, by building bridges with the gay communites. ( Jarvis,N, 2006,

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