'I DIDN'T KNOW ANY FOOTBALLERS WHO WERE GAY'

This article in the Sunday Age on 9 September 2012 has been followed up by a petition on Change.org which will be here first, followed by the newspaper article:

(1)Petition:

JASON BALL'S CHANGE.ORG PETITION

(2)newspaper article:

'I didn't know any footballers who were gay'

September 9, 2012


By Jill Stark

Out and proud: Yarra Valley footballer Jason Ball, third from left, wants the AFL to air anti-homophobia videos at the grand final this month. Photo: Ken Irwin

SOMETIMES he'd say he had a girlfriend. In the world of Aussie rules football, Jason Ball thought he had to play up his ''blokeyness''. When teammates sledged opposition players, calling them ''homo'' or ''fag'', he'd pretend not to care.

Inside the footy club where he'd played since he was five, nobody knew he was gay.
''It was the one place I never thought I'd be able to come out. Ever. It just felt like a really hostile environment. I worried I'd be bullied, maybe I'd get kicked out of the side, maybe the opposition would treat me differently or I'd get abuse [from supporters] over the fence,'' he told The Sunday Age. ''I didn't know any footballers who were gay, so I could only assume the worst, and it scared me.''

The 24-year-old, who plays for Yarra Glen seniors in the Yarra Valley Mountain District Football League, is a rare voice in a football world that gay groups say is struggling to come to terms with homosexuality in its ranks.

Illustration: Matt Golding.

While such groups agree sexuality is a private matter, they say it is significant that no AFL players have revealed their homosexuality.

For Ball, publicly coming out was unnecessary. His teammates figured it out and were supportive. The homophobic language stopped. ''It was like they could see those words have an effect on people because it was hurting me, one of their mates.''

Ball believes there are hundreds, maybe thousands of others like him playing in minor leagues, and professionally, who feel too isolated to reveal their sexuality. There are rumours that a TV network has offered a gay AFL player a six-figure sum to be the first footballer to come out.

Today, backed by online-petition movement Change.org, Ball will launch a campaign urging the league to air anti-homophobia videos at the MCG during this month's grand final. He also wants the AFL to stage a ''Pride'' round next season to celebrate sexual diversity.

Beyondblue chairman Jeff Kennett, who last week launched a campaign highlighting the mental health impact of homophobia, backed Ball's petition. He told The Sunday Age he spoke privately with AFL boss Andrew Demetriou last week, urging him to do more to tackle the problem in the game.

''Beyondblue has a relationship with the AFL anyway, and Andrew and I have been discussing some ideas that have not been done before for next year, which will be about sexuality discrimination,'' Mr Kennett said. ''This young man really deserves to be congratulated because there will be many of his fellow footballers who are in exactly the same position but have been worried about public pressure and therefore kept their sexuality to themselves.''

It comes after the AFL last month wrote a letter of support for ''No to Homophobia'' - a campaign run by gay rights and social justice groups - but were criticised for not doing more.

The fact St Kilda's Stephen Milne escaped with a $3000 fine and an education course rather than a suspension, after calling Collingwood defender Harry O'Brien a ''f---ing homo'', implied that sexual vilification was treated less seriously than other forms of discrimination, Ball said.

''At high school I got picked on for being gay and those words were used to make me feel small and worthless. If you look at rates of suicide, self-harm and depression for gay kids, this is a serious issue. I was fine coming out to my school friends and my family but I was terrified coming out to my football team. That makes it the AFL's problem because this culture is in their sport.''

Some have questioned whether the AFL should be responsible for taking a lead role on every major social issue.

But Ball argues that as long as our cultural life is viewed through the prism of football, the AFL has a greater role to play than most in ''changing hearts and minds''.

''It's no wonder that no gay player at a professional level would come out when the AFL is not working as it could to create a more positive and inclusive environment for that to happen. I think the players are ready. The clubs are ready. But we just need the AFL to lead on changing the culture so that players and fans like me can openly be who we are without fear.''

Dr Caroline Symons, a senior lecturer in social policy in sport at Victoria University, says a 2010 report she co-authored surveying the gay and lesbian community found football was the hardest sport for people to be open about their sexuality.

''If you weren't playing well the terms used to motivate men were, 'You're playing like a pack of poofs or faggots.' So the terminology associates being gay with being weak and that can be very alienating,'' she said.

A spokesman for the AFL said it supported diversity and respectful relationships and did not tolerate discrimination.

■The Australian Christian Lobby has rejected Jeff Kennett's offer to replace the Prime Minister at its national conference. On Thursday, Julia Gillard withdrew from the October conference, citing ''offensive'' comments by the lobby's leader, Jim Wallace, on homosexuality.

CHRISSIE FOSTER: THE SILENCE OF THE CLOTH UNDER SIEGE

The silence of the cloth under siege
Chrissie Foster

March 10, 2012

Chrissie Foster and her husband, Anthony, with a portrait of their family, torn apart from church sex crimes. Photo: Craig Sillitoe

FORGET religion. Forget God. This is about the safety of children.

The landmark Protecting Victoria's Vulnerable Children inquiry, headed by a retired Supreme Court judge, Philip Cummins, has made powerful recommendations about Victorian churches' handling of child sex crimes.

Citing the Catholic Church's system as an example of inadequate child protection, the Cummins report said: ''Any private system of investigation and compensation which has the tendency, whether intended or unintended, to divert victims from recourse to the state, and to prevent abusers from being held responsible and punished by the state, is a system that should come under clear public scrutiny and consideration … Crime is a public, not a private, matter.''

The inquiry believes the closed doors of the Catholic Church need to be opened. Recommendation 48 declares: ''A formal investigation should be conducted into the processes by which religious organisations respond to the criminal abuse of children by religious personnel within their organisations. Such an investigation should possess the powers to compel the elicitation of witness evidence and of documentary and electronic evidence.''

For a long time, victims and their families have been arguing for a royal commission on the Catholic Church's mishandling and cover-ups of child sex crimes. We were pleased with, indeed much relieved by, the findings of the Cummins report.
It is frightening that the church's so-called Melbourne Response, and the similar rest-of-Australia scheme ironically called Towards Healing, have been operating unchallenged by the state for 16 years. In that time the church has minimised payouts to victims and locked away the truth that could make for a safer future for children.

Church authorities keep the facts to themselves. But let us consider, on the evidence that is available to us, just how damaging these schemes have been.
We know that between 1993 and 2011, 65 Victorian Catholic priests and brothers have been convicted in the courts. A further 53 different Catholic priests and brothers have been involved in out-of-court settlements.

That is a total of 118 clergy offenders in Victoria alone. But 118 is not an accurate number. It is a minimum. Many more clergy offenders have eluded media scrutiny and still more have been secreted away in the church's self-serving internal systems.

Only the church knows the true number of offenders. It is time for us all to know.
The career paedophiles of the Catholic Church, who had trust, authority and access to endless numbers of Victorian school children, were living the dream of every paedophile. History tells us the only sanction paedophile priests faced if discovered to be criminals was relocation to another parish. Never laicisation. Never police intervention.

Sexual assaults are costly both to the child and society. Victims suffer directly, and taxpayers foot the bill in supporting and repairing these broken lives.
But the highest price of all is suicide. Clergy childhood sexual assault costs lives. Victoria Police investigations over the past 10 years have shown 35 suicides, most from just two clergy. There are other suicides from other clergy offenders; my daughter is one of them. Sometimes I wonder if these suicides are murder.

In July 2010 the Archbishop of Melbourne, Denis Hart, wrote a pastoral letter, stating: ''Since 1996, we have introduced procedures to protect parishioners and children against sexual abuse, and processes have been developed and applied.'' But only seven months earlier, my husband and I had wanted to visit the shower room in the school hall where our paedophile parish priest had raped our five-year-old daughter. We learnt that, 20 years later, the priest was still the only person possessing a key to this secluded room.

Archbishop Hart's letter to parishioners also announced: ''Seminarians are required to undertake study of the church's code of conduct for priests.''
I had to wonder what effect the church's ''code of conduct'' - mere words on paper - would have in deterring a paedophile.

In the past, no threat of the wrath of God from God's law, no threat of laicisation from canon law and no threat of prison from civil law - all words on paper - had ever worked.

But now, time is up for the church. The cries for justice for Victoria's children must be heard. The state government must say yes to a state-led inquiry, as called for by the Cummins report.

Our state must protect our children. We must have a royal commission now.

Chrissie Foster is the co-author of Hell on the Way to Heaven (2010).

HOMOPHOBIA CONTINUES UNABATED IN AFL AND OTHER CODES IN AUSTRALIA

This article appeared in the Fairfax media over the weekend of 19 February 2012.

Rob Mitchell tells how there is no change in homophobia in footy games in Australia after years and years of trying to get changes!

AFL needs to man up on homophobia issue
Rob Mitchell
February 19, 2012

Andrew Demetriou: says the AFL is educating players on gay issues. Photo: Paul Rovere

THE head of the AFL, Andrew Demetriou, ought to take his colleague Jeff Kennett out to lunch.

Along with his credit card, Mr Demetriou might want to take a notepad. If events this week are any guide, he could learn a lot from Mr Kennett.

Earlier this week, Mr Kennett was on radio talking about depression. As chairman of the national anti-depression outfit beyondblue, and after a long stint as president of the Hawthorn Football Club, he is adept at using his high media profile to destigmatise depression and suicide.

The interview took an unexpected turn. While talking about depression in professional footballers, Mr Kennett went on to say that approximately 5 per cent of professional AFL footballers are gay, and the fact that none of them were publicly ''out'' was a major cause for concern because having to hide their sexual orientation - particularly in the goldfish bowl of AFL football - was highly detrimental to their mental health.

Mr Kennett's track record with gay issues has been troubled - he ended up at loggerheads with his previous chief executive, Dawn O'Neil, over comments about gay parenting - but his 5 per cent figure is a reasonable assumption. Research undertaken by beyondblue shows that in men aged 25 and under, some 10 per cent will identify as same-sex attracted. Given that half of the 800-odd professional AFL footballers are aged under 25, that would suggest about 40 players are gay in that age group alone. The research also tells us AFL is regarded as the most homophobic of all the football codes.

Naturally, Mr Kennett's comments were later put to Andrew Demetriou, who, as luck would have it, was already well and truly in diversity mode at a function spruiking the AFL's credentials in respect towards women.

Mr Demetriou assured the media that the AFL was ''ahead of the game'' when it came to ensuring the code was inclusive of gay men, not only because discrimination based on sexual orientation was now included in the AFL anti-vilification code, but also due to the fact that all footballers have seen a video of gay Olympic swimmer Daniel Kowalski talking about his own experience in coming out.

Who's he trying to kid? The cold hard reality is that the AFL has as little to do with the gay community as it possibly can. The rule change that Mr Demetriou referred to only occurred after some 18 months of intensive lobbying by the gay community, and when finally sexual orientation was included in the anti-vilification section of the AFL rules, it was 10 years after the same provision was placed in Victoria's Equal Opportunity Act.

And while it's useful for footballers to watch a video on what it is like to be an elite gay swimmer, surely that pulls up well short of the kind of education we can reasonably expect the AFL to give its players.

The AFL has also conveniently forgotten to mention that it is paid more than $400,000 a year from the Australian Sports Commission to make the code more inclusive.

Truth is, there are no ''out'' gay AFL footballers because they refuse to self-identify in an environment that they perceive to be toxic. The responsibility for this rests squarely on the shoulders of the administrators. Not the players. Not the fans. Not the umpires. Not the coaches.

The drivel that is put forward from the AFL about coming out being ''a personal choice'' is precisely that. For the AFL to say that all their gay players are ''choosing'' to remain in the closet is ridiculous.

It beggars belief that a gay AFL footballer would not want his partner to be involved in events like the Brownlows. Not because they are looking to be activists, but because they want to be able to be honest with everyone around them. Why does the AFL not get that?

Further, the AFL as administrators refuse to make any effort to help their gay players, not because they lack the resources - the AFL earns hundreds of millions of dollars a year and pays no income tax - but simply because they don't want to. And they don't want to because, despite the lip service, diversity and inclusion is not regarded as core business.

If the AFL wanted to, it could transform the issue of homophobia in football in a heartbeat. When the AFL Players Association ran a ground-breaking project for the International Day Against Homophobia two years ago, the AFL took notice and was getting ready to run a diversity round to highlight the value of inclusion in sport. Then along came Jason Akermanis with his infamous ''Stay in the closet'' newspaper column, and the wheels fell off. As a result, the AFL decided, again, to put gay in the too-hard basket.

While the AFL refuses to address the issue of homophobia in the code, it's never going to get any better. It's not an unreasonable expectation for the AFL to do equality equally. Now would be a good time to start.

Rob Mitchell is a member of the Victorian Department of Sport governance and inclusion project.