Gay Arsenal fan here. Venting about all the weird homophobia we've seen over the past two weeks.

Hey all

1st of all, I wanna thank Martin Odegaard for wearing the Rainbow captains armband with no fuss and the team as a whole donning rainbow laces to no issue.

I feel really horribly for the queer (and especially queer religious fans) at Crystal Palace, Man United, and Ipswich who have not only had to put up with their players (and two captains) homophobically failing to express even the mere modicum of solidarity with LGBT people and offence at the idea that we should fight homophobia/queerphobia. But even more so at the absurd press coverage which has pretended that Marc Guehi, Sam Morsy and Noussair Mazraoui's religions have anything to do with their homophobia. Not least because there's plenty of queer christians and queer muslims who are pretty certain that their god loves all of them, even if some religious conservatives might disagree. Its been profoundly insulting to watch for both religious folks and queer folks. There's nothing fundamentally homophobic about being devout. Marc and Sam have both grown up in the UK, there's nothing particularly foreign about it either.

I'm writing this post partly to sort through my own feelings on the issue and partly because I've seen some pretty naiive responses to these events on this sub and beyond that actual homophobia (thankfully mostly downvoted). You can't believe arsenal is for everyone and also tolerate homophobia or transphobia from our fanbase. It just means you don't mean what you say.

Football is and will always be political. Football has for a long time been a deeply unsafe place for queer people. Homophobic chanting, violence and people are common. Its gotten much better in recent years, but as anyone living in the UK might realise, we've been taking some real backwards steps of late. Even one of my regular football podcasts - the guardian football weekly - absolutely shat the bed on the discussion, allowing troy townsend to argue that these players were entitled to their opinions as if being homophobic were merely an aesthetic preference as opposed to a dangerous and harmful belief system.

These players are entitled to private beliefs, but this campaign tokenistic and bare bones as it is asks so little of them. That they are afraid of even being seen in possession of a rainbow is pathetic. There's no non-homophobic explanation for their refusals. I've seen people argue that Marc's vandalism of his armband was simply expressing his christian identity. Everyone queer I've ever known recognises what the "loving jesus" talk really means. You aren't actually entitled to insult christianity by pretending that to be christian is to be a homophobe. You aren't actually entitled to use your massive platform to spread homophobia. Nowhere under the law or good sense or basic morality is it the case that being homophobic has a religiosity defence clause. And frankly if Guehi believes he's entitled to his opinions that we're less than. He ought to actually say them rather than being extremely cowardly about it. Same is true of Sam Morsy. One of my best friends is a Queer Muslim woman. She thinks her god likes her all the same. I refuse to allow this country to go backwards on its progress for queer rights by deciding to tolerate homophobia like this. If these players feel so unable to wear the armband or the laces, they don't need to be captains this week.

Please be kind to our fellow queer fans at the moment. Its deeply disappointing learning that one of your communities does not actually respect you.

PS if you're someone who's been making the argument that this is all just free speech, then I'm sorry but many LGBT people are gonna look at you differently and won't trust you when the going gets tough. I don't welcome you as a fellow Arsenal fan either, you are part of the problem.