Outed Footballer Sues

As a follow up to this story, in which the News of the World tabloid revealed that some premiership footballers like to play with each other a bit more than was first expected, it seems that the footballer and the DJ indentified by the picture published, have decided to sue the papers involved in (rightly or wrongly) outing them.

Because of the way the identity of the people involved was disclosed (by internet websites and not by the papers themselves) and because of the fact that the player is claiming breach of privacy while also claiming that libel, it seems that the case could create a legal precedent too.

The solicitors for the footballer actually go one further and have taken the usual step of setting up an internet survey to try and figure out the impact of the revelations.

I went and took the (not very detailed) survey and left these few words in the comments sections:

I did not actually read about those stories in the papers (although I did subsequently check the NOTW website) but heard about them on the very popular blog Towleroad. I myself own a blog and have posted about the story on it.

My concern resided in the fact that should Mr Cole indeed be gay, the reactions of the football world (which is notoriously homophobic) could have a very bad impact on his career and his life (Cf Justin Fashanu); something which is obviously totally wrong. People's sexuality should have no influence on how they are perceived.

While I think it is important for gay athletes to come out publicly and thus provide a positive image of LGBT people, I think this decision should be there own and the NOTW's deslosures were only motivated by pruriency and most probably homophobia.

Tags: football, soccer, gay, LGBT, GLBT, sport, bisexual, homophobia, gay rights.

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