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The world’s greatest sport, Australian Rules football, has some problems at the moment. The recently re-vamped rules regulating when the ball has been forced out of bounds on purpose prompt much booing and bafflement in the stands. Likewise the high-tackle. Did the nippy rover duck into the knee that knocked him silly, or was flattened by an adversary’s contemptuous disregard for his safety? While these matters are moot, another aspect of the homegrown game is beyond dispute: its executives’ galloping hypocrisy.
Tonight (Friday, August 12) will see the first game of this weekend’s so-called Pride Game, which Chief Executive Gillon McLachlan is presenting as something akin to a manifestation of the AFL’s moral obligation to promote acceptance of the gay lifestyle. Just why a sporting code feels obliged to push alternate forms of human affection remains a mystery, one explained not at all by McLachlan’s conceit that the popularity of his code imposes an obligation “to lead” on this and other social issues. As Tim Blair points out, this agenda also includes preferential scholarships for Muslims, but adherents of no other creed. If you’re a devout Calathumpian who can slot six-pointers from the intersection of the boundary line and fifty, bad luck.
Given the bare-faced and discriminatory intent of that programme, it might be difficult to imagine a more blatant example of hypocrisy. Yet, as is so often the case with the AFL, it strives to exceed even its own worst standards.
Consider this week’s gay-themed game between Sydney and St Kilda, which will feature gay flags and, no doubt, many sermons.
What the AFL would not be pondered is another match, tonight’s contest between Footscray and Collingwood to be played at Etihad Stadium, which bears the name and enjoys the sponsorship of Abu Dhabi’s national airline. How are homosexuals treated in Abu Dhabi? Not well, not well at all, as being gay is a crime in itself, regardless of whether or not a happy couple, threesome or whatever actually engage in intimate caresses.
Nor does the hypocrisy stop there. One of tonight’s teams, the Magpies, is sponsored by Emirates, which offers club members substantial discounts on their fares. That airline is based in Dubai, where similar sanctions apply, and only yesterday a Canadian transsexual was summarily locked up immediately upon arrival.
If you happen to watch tonight’s game, bear all this in mind as the AFL prepares for its mardi gras match — a contest aimed at the betterment of the little people in the grandstands. Most will arrive for a sporting spectacle only to find that contest into the whitened sepulchre of the AFL’s social engineers.
Roger Franklin, who expects the Bulldogs to win by seven goals and will be betting accordingly, is the editor of Quadrant Online.
Couldn’t we have tattooed apes chasing bags of wind, problem solved;-)
Ex editor of Overland, Ian Syson, demanded that there would be plenty of gay AFL players if not for the homophobia displayed by the lumpenproles in the outer when barracking vigorously. This helped establish ‘The Pink Magpies’ …a group of Collingwood supporters who gathered together for protection from the general horror to support their team in a safe space. Lo… here it is 2016 and still no gay AFL footballers have come out… what if AFL football is heteronormative ? … what if its a purely heterosexual thingy ? would that be OK ? … Or maybe we could have a Gay pride League who dressed up to play for the Mardi Gras Cup before the girls league and make it all compulsory viewing on the telly. It looks like the feminists have invaded the AFL and are trying to tear the joint down … would it not be a better idea if the AFL actually stood up for healthy young men rather than submit to all this man hating heterophobia ?
And the politics of identity grows apace. Hypocrisy is of no consequence whatsoever, especially with 18C such a vigorous scourge and its’ opposite, intellectual honesty, is considered a public handicap. The reversal of the Rennaisance continues.
And when you use the colour pink and/or ‘rainbow’ to symbolize the epicene in sport rather than club, state or national allegiances you know it’s a bridge too far. I’m so utterly bored with the ritualistic sexist bromides directed towards the healthy, heterosexual adult male (mostly on the basis of them being so-call over-privileged, violent women-haters who have all the good jobs/best pay) – because I have three adult sons myself. Next time that abject Van Badham is on Q&A I want to hear some articulate conservative say to her, “you choose to display arrant sexism towards Australian males yet you claim special treatment, by some kind of vertiginous logic, to be protected from the very things you do to others yourself”. This won’t happen because conservative men are frightened by a ball-crushing ‘feminist’ lummox because they loathe the prospect of a diatribe and public showdown – precisely because they are NOT the vile misogynists she so describes!!!
This is for Van and her execrable counterpart (shouldn’t that be counter-weight?) Clementine Ford (NEVER to be confused with “Oh, my darling Clementine”!):
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ClKnwT_UsAEdoVm.jpg:large
Indeed, heterosexual males do not enjoy hysterics, screechy put-downs and blatant hostility because they, by nature, tend to ‘stand back’. And society is such that screechy put-downs are enthusiastically supported. The link to the ‘appallingly’ mistreated Gigi (I could only watch a part of it) shows someone who clearly feels he/she is speaking to the converted: it says something about today’s Australian society.
No time for gays or football personally. While I can managed to be amused at the idea of “gay pride”, I am truly amazed that the general public tolerates the blatant selling of the LBGT brand to youth. Really shocking though, in my view, is the fact that the Boards of organisations that have nothing to do with sexuality as such in their business, take it upon themselves to join the chorus of support for LBGT. It shows an alarming lack of intellect, and a worrying capacity for being manipulated.