OpinionSoccer This article is more than 12 years old

The 'gay for Thierry Henry' outpouring heralds a new openness

This article is more than 12 years oldPaul FlynnAfter Henry's skilful homecoming, fans said they would 'go gay' for him. Isn't it time football bodies stopped playing it straight?

If Thierry Henry's return to the Arsenal playing field was evidence of the Beautiful Game fulfilling its mythological title, the fans' reaction was a surprisingly transparent testament to the Beautiful Man at the centre of it. From Twitter to the Arsenal Mania forum, an avalanche of online love showered upon the homecoming hero, echoing up and down the wire in the indivisible language of gay love. "Thierry Henry is a man I would turn gay for" was the oft-tweeted refrain; others declared themselves "lovestruck".

The outpouring of "gay for Henry" love that followed Henry's superb sporting display on Tuesday evening was not entirely surprising. British soccer is a unique duality – the national conduit for open displays of straight male affection and its closely related inverse, casual male violence. It is rivalled only by rock music as a forum for "acceptable" male admiration for one another. Totemic rock stars like John Lennon and Morrissey have long been subject to "go gay for"-type fan worship.

But this was something more. For an hour after the whistle blew on Tuesday it seemed like a corner of north London had been whipped up into enough of a euphoric rush to embrace the last demon of its parent association, the FA. The fans had inadvertently flipped the association's latent, exclusive attitude toward homosexuality on its head.

The relative anonymity of the internet can facilitate ugly language but here it seemed to allow for something quite lovely; a language that might be deemed unacceptable in more public forums. From behind the shroud of an online avatar a new openness appeared.

Maybe I was taking it too literally but the forcefulness of the collective thinking, that no greater compliment could be bestowed on a man than "going gay" for him, felt brand new. I'm not sure how as a gay man you are supposed to react to this outpouring of straight male affection but you would have to look very hard to be offended by it. Personally I found it all simmering with an appealing new texture for the culture around soccer.

The relationship between gay men and football has been a long-standing stumbling block in Britain's stealthy movement towards liberalisation. When Elton John took over as shareholder of his beloved Watford FC in the 80s he would routinely be comically abused from the terraces, name-calling he took in open, manful good humour. Graeme Le Saux, Freddie Ljungberg and numerous other Premier League stars have since been dealt weekly catcalls speculating on their sexuality. Justin Fashanu's heartbreaking early-90s coming out and subsequent suicide has cast a long shadow across the national game.

Yet perhaps there is a change afoot, led by the fans and one that the establishment would be wise to acknowledge. When I interviewed David Beckham for the cover story of the gay magazine Attitude in 2001, at the peak of his Man Utd tenure, he conceded that sooner or later the fractious relationship between the football establishment and homosexuality would have to be broken down. It was just a matter of time. His astute PR move of posing for the cover was a start, at least. He later appeared at the London nightclub G.A.Y, maximising his obvious gay appeal, and was greeted by 2,000 screaming gay fans who had composed their own football-ish chant by way of greeting: "Ditch the bitch, ditch the bitch, ditch the bitch and make the switch!" Straight men no longer had the monopoly on the brutal wit of stadium sloganeering.

More than a decade later the seismic shift Beckham predicted appeared not to have taken place. The British institutions of rugby and cricket now have their own open gay players, the former in the muscled omnipresence of former Welsh ace Gareth Thomas, greeted on the pitch after his coming out with open arms and currently undergoing the seal of celebrity approval of a stint in Big Brother, the latter in the quieter figure of England wicket-keeper, Steven Davies.

Yet league football seems to operate a No Gays Allowed policy. The body in control of British football operates an outmoded policy of Don't Ask, Don't Tell when it comes to gay players. In response to the news that the 2022 World Cup was to be held in Qatar, where homosexuality is illegal, Fifa boss Sepp Blatter suggested jokily that gay fans might "refrain from sexual activities" if they wanted to enjoy the tournament.

If the fans are tantalisingly ready for a bit of open male love in football, we may have to wait a while until the institution is. The fans declaring their light-hearted willing to go gay for Henry are matched point-for-point by an institution still condemned to playing it absolutely straight for their bosses.

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