IT IS hard to believe that 18 years after Justin Fashanu publicly
announced he was gay, he remains the only professional footballer to
have come out. On the tenth anniversary of
Fashanu’s tragic death, former British NBA basketball star, John
Amaechi -who came out last year - has told The Voice that there should
be “no more martyrs for the cause.” Fashanu, a talented footballer who played
for clubs including
Nottingham Forest, Norwich City, West Ham United
and Manchester City, committed suicide on the May 2, 1998. Coming out in an interview with The Sun
newspaper in 1990, he became the target for vile homophobic abuse from
football fans across the country. After his retirement from the game, he was accused of a sexual assault – which he denied, before taking his own life. In an exclusive interview with The Voice,
Amaechi, paid tribute to the bravery of Fashanu and admitted he took
note of the former footballer’s negative experiences before making his
own decision to come out. “I don’t think you can take anything away
from the abject bravery of what he did. I just think that he entered
the storm completely alone.“I looked at his experience as a bench mark
for how bad it could get, because it wasn’t just the fans - a lot of
what went on was the absolutely abominable news coverage.”So one year on, having spoken about his
homosexuality on globally popular television programmes such as the
Oprah Winfrey Show, what has been the response to his announcement
been?“Ninety per cent of the response was
overwhelmingly positive but the ten per cent that were negative were
very, very negative; those people were very serious about me not being
around.“You have to be so on point to be able to handle questions, face criticism and be ready to handle the death threats.”Debates around homosexuality in the black
community have long since caused heated discussion and division.
Amaechi believes the response he has received from the community has
been largely positive. But he does identify some specific issues around
being black, gay and in sport.“The juxtaposition of being gay and black
in sports is especially powerful. Because if people were to guess who
the gay people in sport were, they’d pick the white folk.“The bad part about that is it leads to a
double prejudice. So you’ve got the black people stereotype - that
black people are strong, can jump high, are really quick and very
masculine.“Then because you’ve got this one
stereotype of black people, that automatically means they can’t be gay,
because you’ve got a stereotype about what gay people are, which is
absurd.” SOURCE: THE VOICE