Anyone who really cares about inclusion and diversity must have a clear-eyed assessment of how much work is required. That there is still a lot of bristling at the mere presence of people like me in and around the club, and that any attempt to make us feel nominally welcome is met with wailing and gnashing of teeth. I would argue that it’s important to highlight just how much opposition remains to even the blandest, most heavily focus-group-tested inclusion campaigns. There are also a number who believe that, by participating in this campaign and making their support for LGBT fans explicit, the club is just needlessly injecting “politics” where it doesn’t belong and alienating fans who might not agree. Beyond that, there are also too many liberal-minded or self-identifying progressive fans who believe that homophobia is largely gone, and that apart from a few loud hold-outs English football is already a welcome space for LGBT people. Just focusing on Liverpool, there are too many Reds fans who believe that LGBT supporters- like me- do not belong here. Yet regardless of the efficacy of the Rainbow Laces campaign, it’s clear that work remains to make football more inclusive. “We slapped the rainbow graphic on everything in sight…why won’t a player come out?” - English football, basically- David Rudin November 26, 2017
