International Day against LGBTphobia in Sports

On February 19th we commemorate the International Day against LGBTphobia in Sports celebrating the birthday of Justin Fashanu, born in Nigeria in 1961, and the first football player openly gay during his active professional  career in the England's Premier League. His process of coming out was the end of this career and even of his life when he was uncapable of afford an unproven accusation of sexual abuse in 1998.



(By http://www.7sur7.be/7s7/fr/1510/Football-Etranger/article/detail/757282/2009/03/10/Un-club-de-football-pour-gays-voit-le-jour-en-Angleterre.dhtml, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=24030254)

Founded in 2008, The Justin Campaign was created in his memory by the LGBTQ+ community in London. With homophobia still prevalent at both grassroots and professional level, the campaign’s aims include raising awareness through a strong focus on art, events, education, and sport. The Justin Campaign’s stated goals include seeking "to challenge the stereotypes and misconceptions that exist around LGB &T (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Trans) people and work towards a future where the visibility of LGB & T people in football is both accepted and celebrated."



The Bishopsgate Institute (BI) in London keeps the archive of this initiative, including 9 boxes with papers, press cuttings, memorabilia, artefacts and ephemera created by and about The Justin Campaign between 1978 and 2018. This fonds is part of Queer Britain Collections at BI and was catalogued by Barbara Vesey in 2019.

We can founf another archival community initiative remembering Justin at Other Stories LGBT History Project. Other Stories is an LGBT History Project dedicated to telling other stories from the LGBT community’s history under the shape of a blog. It was launched in 2017 to coincide with 50 years since the landmark 1967 Sexual Offences Act and the decriminalization of homosexuality in England and Wales. The project wants to record people’s memories and also delving into archives to find “other stories” of interest to the LGBT+ community, with a particular focus on Derbyshire and surrounding areas. The project is hosted and delivered by Derbyshire LGBT+, a charity dedicated to supporting the community in and around the county. This is a project run by and for the LGBT+ community.

In 2018 Other Stories posted a research about Justin's life and circumstances, including photographs and videos written by a group of Nottingham Trent University undergraduate History students.


To know more about Justin anf this International Day we invite you to visit last year's post at Homosensualwebsite (in Spanish) by Ana Flores, and the Justin's entry at Wikipedia.

And, of course, you can also visit the Section on Sports Archives at ICA's website.

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