Retired NBA star John Amaechi tells MPs that football authorities must stamp out homophobia

Amaechi, who is gay, said that in the stands and in dressing rooms, football is tacity allowing homophobia and misogyny by not cracking down on unacceptable language

John Amaechi told the Department for Culture, Media and Sport select committee they need to do more to tackle homophobia (Getty)

John Amaechi has told English football to start treating homophobia and misogyny with the same seriousness with which it tackles racism. Speaking at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport select committee this morning, former NBA star Amaechi compared the “tacit messages” of approval for homophobia and misogyny from the authorities to those that come from Donald Trump approving racism in the United States.

Amaechi, who came out as gay in 2007, said that football had the responsibility, and the resources, to make the progress against homophobia as it has against racism. “This is not an intractable problem,” Amaechi said this morning, “things that are tolerated when it comes to homophobia are not tolerated when it comes to race. Racism is tackled relatively more seriously, there is a hierarchy of oppression, and it clear where gay people and women sit, not at the top. When you tackle one bit, one ‘ism’ at a time, you tell people what you think is important. Football has the resources to do what it wants.”

The lack of out gay players in English football is taken as proof as football’s persistent homophobia, and Amaechi told the homophobia in sport select committee that it was the duty of football boardrooms to send the right message to players and fans.

Amaechi retired from the NBA in 2003 and came out as gay four years later (Getty)

“There is always an ignorant segment of society, when you look on the field, in the stands, or to the boardroom,” Amaechi said. “I would suggest the percentage [of that segment] moves up, when you move out of the stands, towards the boardroom.”

“We are led to believe that fans are feral, with no choice to do what they want,” Amaechi said. “But tacit messages come from leadership, the lack of sanction from leaders for sexist e-mails or homophobic behaviour. That seeps down and tells people, these are the lines and this is how you should read in between them. The leaders are responsible for the tone they set, for allowing what they allow.”

Amaechi told MPs to treat homophobia and misogyny like they do racism (Getty)

While racist abuse has been almost eliminated at British football grounds, the same is not true of homophobia, and Amaechi pointed to the accepted norms of a football crowd as being the cause of that. “I don’t think it is entire stands [who are homophobic], it is a small percentage of people,” he said. “They are freed by a context, almost literally, the context of entering a stadium. Once they enter the stadium, the context changes on what they are allowed to say.”

Amaechi said that he has been in touch with gay footballers in the Premier League who have not come out publicly, because some feel that their people at their clubs were hostile to homosexuality. He continued that that coaches have a duty not to allow homophobia in dressing rooms. “We live in the age of celebrity coaches, and teams are a reflection of that,” he said. “If, as a coach, you allow toxic words, because you want to call them banter, that if your fault, and you have that as the baseline for your team.”

Amaechi was born in Boston and has already voted in Tuesday’s presidential election, for Hillary Clinton. “Donald Trump is an example of the idea that leaders tell people how to read between the lines of what is acceptable,” he said. “There are people who look to him and say ‘finally someone powerful says it is ok to talk about doing terrible things to people’. In football, these are the very lines that people are reading between.”

According to Amaechi, there is not just a moral case for fighting homophobia in British sport but also a sporting case. “I am not interested in reducing racism, homophobia and misogyny because it is the nice thing to do,” he said. “Look at our sports, in football, and ask when they last time they won was, with the resources that they have? If they had every player, of every race and sexuality, unfettered by a toxic environment, we would have the ability to win. This is not about niceness, kindness or ethics, it’s about performance.”

“We have a finite amount of energy. If you use one per cent of it to use gender-neutral pronouns in front of a camera, to wear a hoody when you sit next to someone significant, that energy could be the difference between good and great, between winning and losing. This is why it is important.”