Last year, Downtown Soccer Toronto (DST) released a sexy calendar to raise money for the Justin Campaign, a British-based sports charity aimed at educating children and fighting homophobia in sports.
The Justin Campaign was founded in memory of UK footballer Justin Fashanu. Before Fashanu came out in 1990 he was one of football’s brightest stars and the first black footballer to make £1 million. But no other athletes followed him out of the closet, and for eight years he was the UK’s only openly gay man in professional football.
Homophobia blighted Fashanu’s career until his retirement in 1997. His brother publicly disowned him, and Brian Clough, Fashanu’s team manager, barred him from training with the team when he found out he was gay. In 1998, a 17-year-old American accused Fashanu of sexual assault. The media erroneously reported that the police were out to arrest Fashanu, even though there was insufficient evidence to lay charges. Fashanu succumbed to public humiliation. In his suicide note he wrote, “I realized that I had already been presumed guilty. I do not want to give any more embarrassment to my friends and family.”
Why did DST go so far afield in the search for a recipient charity? The short answer is that there doesn’t seem to be a charity dedicated specifically to fighting homophobia in professional sports in Canada.
That absence may seem odd, but Avery Miller, a DST spokesperson, says Canadians do not share Brits’ near-obsessive passion for sports. And, until recently, most people involved with Canada’s gay movement seemed focused on winning legal rights. Gay politicos in the UK, on the other hand, tend to be more focused on turning hearts and minds away from homophobia than pursuing court cases and fighting for legislative reform.
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