Doha, Qatar

Source: Bigstock

As the 2022 soccer World Cup finally ends over in the Gulf state of Qatar, it brings to a conclusion three weeks of not only sporting action but also, much less entertainingly, an entire stadium’s worth of colossal moral grandstanding.

Qatar was the first Muslim nation to host a World Cup, which means, amazingly, that Islamic law prevails there, making homosexual acts illegal, counterproductively punishable by several years’ imprisonment in the exclusive close-quarters company of other men’s bodies. Naturally, Qatar’s stance provided an unmissable opportunity for woke Western sportsmen to try to enforce their personal liberal pieties upon a captive global audience of billions.

First to score a PR open goal were the Australians, whose playing squad appeared in a video to claim there were certain “universal values that should define football” (as non-Americans call “soccer”). Indeed so: playing by the rules, displaying sportsmanship, rarely punching the referee in the face. But one of the newest most inherent values of the sport is also aggressively promoting homosexuality and transgenderism, something now completely nonnegotiable, at least in the West.

The self-appointed moral arbiters of Football Australia, whose pathetic team was present there for about a fortnight, somehow now possessed the automatic right to “establish a lasting legacy in Qatar,” which “must include,” inter alia, “the decriminalization of all same-sex relationships” in the nation: “As the most multicultural, diverse and inclusive sport in our country, we believe everyone should be able to feel safe and be their true authentic selves.”

But what about the competing ability of devout Qatari Muslims to be their own “true authentic selves” within the confines of their own country, where unholy rainbow practices are widely considered abominations in the eyes of Allah? These “universal values” of which soccer speaks are not universal at all; they are purely local to our current leftist Western governing class and the deranged activist groups who now increasingly control them.

When U.K. Foreign Minister James Cleverly pragmatically advised gay visitors to Qatar to be toned down in their public conduct and “respect the culture of your host nation” prior to kickoff, he was immediately condemned by LGBTQ fan group 3LionsPride as forcing them “back into the closet.” Cleverly’s supposed advice for them to “be less queer” played into the “fractioning of us as either ‘tolerable’ queers or ones who are too much” and (inevitably…) “risks mental health crises,” the group said. Furthermore, “some trans and gender-diverse fans don’t have the option of being ‘less visibly queer’” whilst out in Qatar, 3LionsPride said; have they never heard of burkas?

“Human rights are universal and they apply everywhere,” ten European Football Associations wrote in a November joint public letter piously calling for “progressive sustainable change” in Qatar. Imagine the outcry if the Qatari team turned up to a future World Cup held in, say, Holland and demanded they ban gay marriage in order to leave a lasting legacy in terms of the “universal” (as they believe them to be) values of Islam. “We agree that diversity is a strength,” the European FAs continued, blithely ignorant of the fact that the words “diverse” and “universal” are direct antonyms.

It’s not just football that’s being forcibly turned queer nowadays, either. During the 2022 Commonwealth Games athletics bore-fest held in gay-tastic Great Britain, the BBC (Bum-Boys’ Club, formerly British Broadcasting Corporation) broadcast a documentary by gay Olympic diver Tom Daley entitled Tom Daley: Illegal to Be Me. Actually, no specific law against being Tom Daley is currently in place upon U.K. statute books, but in 35 of 56 Commonwealth member states, same-sex relations like those Tom himself evidently enjoys so much with his “husband” are indeed criminalized. As many of the precise laws enacting such prohibitions were first imposed during the days of the British Empire, Daley dubiously argued global “homophobia was a legacy of colonialism,” an opinion that totally ignores the fact that the traditionally antigay attitudes of most world cultures like Islam predated the existence of the Empire by centuries.

For the majority of Commonwealth nations, direct rule from London was supposed to have ended generations ago, and yet their people have still chosen, of their own free accord, not to repeal these colonial-era antigay laws in the intervening decades—that is what “independence” means, the ability to rule yourselves, according to your own standards of living, whether random Westerners like Tom Daley happen to agree with them or not.

Meanwhile, in the ideologically colonized West itself, dissenting soccer players are the ones being oppressed, not gay fans. In May 2022, the ironically named Senegalese midfielder Idrissa Gana Gueye, of France’s leading club Paris Saint-Germain, absented himself from a match against Montpelier, allegedly due to it being compulsory for players to wear shirts with rainbow-hued squad numbers that day. A Muslim, Gueye had also missed the previous season’s corresponding big pink gay fixture with “gastroenteritis,” and was now issued an official reprimand from the France Football Federation, accusing him of “a refusal to participate,” a “very serious error.” He had either to issue a public apology, or deny this was why he had been absent. French politician Valérie Pécresse called footballers “role models for our children” and urged his immediate stoning for apostasy: “Gueye’s refusal to associate himself with the fight against homophobia cannot go without sanction!”

This led to mass outrage in the 95 percent Muslim nation of Senegal, where, as in Qatar, homosexuality is illegal. Even the president, Macky Sall, tweeted that “I support Idrissa Gana Gueye. His religious beliefs must be respected.” The leading global Twitter meme of the day became #weareallidrissa, showing just how “universal” soccer’s newfound woke values in fact were. Senegalese Sports Minister Matar Ba agreed: “When you sign [with a club] it’s to play football. It’s not to promote anything or put aside your beliefs.” Not now: Gueye was soon unceremoniously sold to mediocre English club Everton, whose last trophy came in 1995.

The desert state of Qatar was a ridiculous place to hold a World Cup for many different reasons, such as what its blazing sun did to the thousands of unfortunate quasi-slaves who reportedly built its stadiums. But if one key criterion for being a host nation is now that you have to be a free country, then the event’s organizers won’t be able to hold any future editions in the West, either, will they?