Rankings are common practice in sports, but LGBTQ inclusivity is rarely in the mix. A health advocacy group, with the help of some of Australia’s most prominent sporting organisations, launched a first-of-its-kind benchmarking system Wednesday that will grade teams on how they support their LGBTQ players, staff, spectators and supporters.
The national Pride in Sport index will annually rank the Australian Rugby Union, National Rugby League, Australian Football League, Football Federation Australia, Cricket Australia and Water Polo Australia.
The National Rugby League float at the 2016 Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras.
Image: Getty Images/Brendon Thorne
ACON’s Pride In Diversity program will be keeping score and the results of the index will be released yearly to see how these codes can do better. ACON hopes other sporting codes will join the initial participants.
“The index will be more than just a signature on a piece of paper,” Andrew Purchas, co-founder of the index and ACON’s vice-president, said in a statement. “It will provide the means for sporting organisations to demonstrate how they’re reducing homophobia and transphobia and making sport more accessible for all.”
Awards will be given to organisations and individuals who lead when it comes to LGBTQ inclusion, with the first ceremony due in May 2017 to commemorate efforts made in the initiative’s first year.
The creation of the Pride in Sport index is a legacy of the 2014 Bingham Cup, the world cup of gay rugby, and a result of a study called Out On The Fields conducted in 2014 and released in May 2015, showing an alarming lack of LGBTQ inclusion in Australia’s sporting culture.
Of the 3,006 study participants, 80% had witnessed or experienced homophobia in sport, with 75% believing an openly gay, lesbian or bisexual person would not be safe as a spectator at a sporting event.
The National Rugby League, who is participating in the index, was also the first Australian sporting code to have a float in the recent Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras.
Although Australia still lags behind on marriage equality, and its politicians are torn over an anti-bullying program to help LGBTQ kids in schools, you can at least count on some of its sports codes to strive for inclusivity.
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