# Just finished watching

By [jonny](https://paragraph.com/@jonny-2) · 2022-11-29

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Just finished watching England v USA. At half-time I bumped into an England fan who was wearing a rainbow ribbon, and asked him if he had any issues getting into the stadium. Apparently he was looked over by three or four different people, but was then told, "oh, it's OK now". I've also seen a couple of fans in USA jerseys with rainbow numbers on the back, so I guess "green shoots" is the phrase.

I've been thinking about that "football is for everyone" slogan quite a lot since I've been here. I think the locals genuinely do believe it, they just don't consider gay fans as part of the equation. It's not necessarily homophobic, it's just such a taboo topic that we're invisible.

It's one of the reasons a lot of my fellow LGBT fans haven't been able to come out here - they've felt, for understandable reasons, excluded. We've watched France vs Denmark in downtown Doha with groups of Mexican, Argentinian and European fans, talking about how this compares to other World Cups. For me, there's a lot to like about how Qatar have run this from a purely football perspective, and on the field there've been some good games.

But what I keep coming back to is the sheer hypocrisy of the messaging, "say no to discrimination". I've met a couple of people who've said, "you're perfectly safe here, why does it matter that you're gay?".

I know I do have that privilege of being relatively safe compared to LGBT Qataris, but unless you've actually walked in our shoes, and have felt that feeling of unease, of feeling excluded, it's very hard to describe.

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*Originally published on [jonny](https://paragraph.com/@jonny-2/just-finished-watching)*