Who Is Discriminating Against Whom?

Not a soccer fan, let alone follower. But I am an interested observer of the growing requirements on professionals in all fields who are required by their employers to actively support things that may conflict with their personal opinions, preferences, ideological, political or religious beliefs.

Case in point today, a soccer player who opted not to play a match. Salient initial facts:

• The player requested not to play for personal reasons. No further reasons were offered or requested by the player’s club.
• The player’s team still handily won the game.
• The player has apparently not made any statements about his absence online or elsewhere (or I’m sure the article would have pointed those out.

You’d think this would be a non-story, right? Wrong. Of course it’s a story. But it may not be the story it ought to be.

Idrissa Gueye asked to be excused from play for a personal reason without making any public statements of any kind, but in doing so he missed a match where the team was required to wear rainbow themed shirts showing support for LGBTQ+ rights. This same player missed the same themed-match a year ago, which has led to the inquiries this year as to what personal reason he might have for not wanting to play.

The article makes it sound like the clubs have the option of participating in this activity. The player’s club apparently decides to participate. It sounds like the club at the very least is willing to not conduct interrogations of players who request not to play in a given match. Though of course at a salary of over $30million, such requests must understandably be few and far between. But because Gueye opted not to directly support LGBTQ+ by wearing a mandatory jersey, he’s under fire. He is not entitled to his opinion or ideas. Nobody is really. Not any more. Not in certain cultures and societies. Not in the realm of LGBTQ+ affirmations. And certainly not if you’re a highly visible athlete with millions of fans.

And to ensure this doesn’t keep happening (which would embarrass the insistence on a show of uniform support and encouragement), Gueye is being asked to explain his absence to an ethics board.

The hilarious irony is better illustrated in this short article, quoting how wonderfully supportive of diversity the LGBTQ+ movement is. If you accept their definition of diversity, which excludes anyone who disagrees with them, even someone who does so without making any more fuss out of it than absolutely needs to.

But the story this story doesn’t bother to tackle, doesn’t want to tackle, is the issue of personal religious beliefs and how they can or can’t be publicly shown or lived out. Gueye is apparently Muslim. Islam does not sanction homosexuality in any way. Gueye’s apparent attempt to live out the tenets of his faith are to be discarded under the insistance that he falsely show support for something expressly forbidden by his religion. But there’s no mention of this in the article. Only the implication that Gueye needs to be properly reprimanded soas not to dare remain faithful to his beliefs, and instead pledge his faith to whatever other banner his club or the French Football Federation or whomever might buy them out chooses to fly on any given day.

This is already a problem in American sports as well, where athletes are expected to wear whatever branding their team management deems necessary or appropriate. I doubt they are given an option about whether they agree with it or not. Which is why parents and grandparents need to be talking with their families about the future, about the increasing difficulty of living your life as a person of faith in a culture and society insisting on not simply tolerance, but affirmation of LGBTQ+ in general.

Masked under the inaccurate language of -phobia, as though people who disagree with LGBTQ+ are afflicted with some sort of irrational fear, employees today and increasingly in the future will not simply have to keep their beliefs private (which is problematic to begin with), but rather actively espouse beliefs contrary to their beliefs. People need to be helping young people both to recognize this and find ways of handling it, as it’s not going to change anytime soon, and is only going to increase in fierceness and frequency.

I disagree in general with the idea of being paid millions of dollars to play a game. Then again, I’m not very talented at any sports-like thing so maybe I’m just bitter. But what a shame for someone with the skills and the tenacity to excel in something being forced to become political instead of letting them do what you’re ostensibly paying them to do – play a game.

Unless of course you’re paying them to do something else – like influence millions of young fans no simply to take up a sport and refine their skills, but to take up ideologies that more and more are likely to contradict multiple tenets of people’s core beliefs.