Column

Comment

Football

Identity

Sport

6 December 2024

5 min read

Football’s rainbow row shows up symbolism’s flaws

The vagueness that gives symbols power reduces the chance for nuanced conversation.

Jonathan Rowlands

Jonathan is a theology lecturer and Liverpool FC fan.

Premier League.

In 2013, the LGBTQ+ charity Stonewall partnered with the Premier League to launch the Rainbow Laces campaign. For certain matches, Premier League footballers are encouraged to wear rainbow colour laces and armbands when captain.

The stated aim of the campaign is to ensure “everyone feels welcome” at football matches. All the league’s clubs have committed to the campaign, although the wearing of laces and armbands is optional for players.

Recently, Ipswich Town’s captain Sam Morsy decided to wear a standard captain’s armband, rather than the rainbow-coloured version. The club later released a statement saying he made this decision due to his religious beliefs, which the club respected. Morsy again declined to wear the rainbow-coloured armband for Ipswich’s match against Crystal Palace a few days later.

Speaking of Crystal Palace, their captain – Marc Guehi – did wear the armband, but wrote “I [heart] Jesus” on it. While the FA did not punish Guehi or Palace, they did write to them to remind them that religious messaging of any kind was not permitted on kits. Subsequently, during Tuesday’s match against Ipswich, Guehi changed the message to “Jesus [heart] you.”

It says something about society’s view of Christianity that people saw Guehi’s “I [heart] Jesus” message and took it as an anti-LGBTQ+ message. The Church is doing something wrong if people can so easily equate loving Jesus with hating LGBTQ+ people.

Of course, it is undeniable that many people have been – and continue to be – discriminated against and persecuted because of their sexual orientation or gender identity in acts of violence and abuse underwritten by religious beliefs.

However, being ‘religious’ is not a straightforward predictor of someone’s views of sexual orientation. Many people who self-identity as Christian, Muslim, Jewish, or as members of any number of other faiths, would describe themselves as inclusive and affirming of people of all sexual orientations and gender identities.

So, why are we talking about what colour armband grown men are wearing – or not wearing – when playing football?

The issue emerges because of the use of these armbands as symbols. Symbols are inherently empty of content; they only mean something when individuals or groups assign meanings to those symbols.

This is how the meaning ascribed to symbols changes over time, as they are used in different ways and received by different social groups. For centuries, the swastika was a wholly positive religious symbol in a variety of traditions across Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism, often carrying connotations of prosperity and good fortune.

You would be hard pressed to find someone who ascribes this meaning to the swastika from the 1930s onwards.

Symbols are powerful, but they are so precisely because they are devoid of intrinsic meaning. Humans are unsurpassed in their ability to fall out with one another. By centring campaigns and movements around symbols, people who would ordinarily be at each other’s throats are more easily able to stand alongside one another, ‘filling’ the symbol with whatever meaning sits most comfortably with them. They are meaningless banners under which odd bedfellows might bury the hatchet in service of greater aims.

But symbols can be a double-edged sword. Their lack of concrete meaning also allows different people to find competing meanings in the same symbol. Part of the reason for the dispute over the wearing of rainbow armbands, then, is due to different groups ascribing different meanings to the same symbol.

For some footballers, being encouraged to wear rainbow armbands might be received as being encouraged to wear a symbol encoded with meanings that undermine their entire system of religious belief.

And, for these people, religious belief is not an optional extra; it is their most fundamental identity and it is the framework within their entire existence and experience is rationalised and given meaning. To undermine a framework like this is no trivial matter.

But for people who identity as LGBTQ+, seeing their team’s captain wearing a rainbow armband might ‘mean’ something as simple as: “If you identify as LGBTQ+, you are welcome here at this football match, and we want you to feel safe here.”

It’s not hard to see how a refusal to wear an armband might be received as a slap in the face for people who ascribe that meaning to the armband; it’s tantamount to a refusal to acknowledge their existence. While it unfortunately does need repeating, the mere existence of LGBTQ+ people is not a threat to religious belief.

The malleability of the symbol means that both individuals – and by extension, the groups to which they belong – are left feeling as though there is no space for them in football. Or, at the very least, that they have to compromise on being who they are if they are to be afforded a place within the football community.

The desire for beige corporate gestures designed to be cheap, easy and unoffensive wins often reduces the scope for conversation and dialogue.

And this is the problem with trying to navigate complex issues such as societal inequality through tokenistic gestures and symbols: the same power that enables symbols to unite people can also divide people. The same vagueness that makes symbols so powerful also minimises the possibility for genuine and nuanced conversation.

This is not to say we should do away with such gestures altogether. The comedian Matt Lucas took to X to recount something of his experiences as an Arsenal fan. Twice this season – just this season – Lucas has been abused at football matches because of his sexuality.

I’ve never been abused at a football match because of my sexuality, gender, race, ethnicity, or, for that matter, my religious beliefs. I don’t think it’s up to me to decide what does and does not make LGBTQ+ supporters feel welcome and safe at the match. If symbols such as rainbow armbands make these supporters feel safer at football matches – and again, it’s not up to me to decide if they do or they don’t – then I can only imagine that is an unqualified positive.

That being said, if football is going to have meaningful and fruitful conversations about questions of faith, religion, and sexuality, then I think it’s clear that tokenistic use of symbols is simply not equipped for that. Like so much contemporary public discourse, the desire for beige corporate gestures designed to be cheap, easy and unoffensive wins often reduces the scope for conversation and dialogue.

Symbols lie at the heart of human experience. The fallout from the actions of Sam Morsy and Marc Guehi demonstrates the significance of symbols to human life, but also of the importance of understanding the meaning of our cultural symbols, both as we understand them, and as they are understood by others.

Too often we focus on what symbols mean to us, at the expense of what they might mean to others. When we assume that symbols carry a shared, fixed meaning for all, we deny ourselves the opportunity to listen and learn from the ways in which we experience our shared cultural symbols.

And if there is one thing we really could do with more of, it is listening.

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Article

Assisted dying

Comment

Politics

25 November 2024

7 min read

Assisted dying hasn’t resolved Swiss end of life debates

Despite attempts to normalise it, new challenges still arise.

Markus Zimmerman

Markus is Professor of Moral Theology and Ethics at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland.

A single bed, wiith an unmade colourful duvet stands in the corner of a room. A hoist reaches over it from the corner.

The dying room, Dignitas Clinic, Zurich.

Dignitas.

While countries such as Germany, France or the UK are currently struggling to find a suitable regulation for assisted suicide, their peers in the Netherlands, Canada and Switzerland have years of experience with the controversial medical practice. Even if each state must explore its own ways of dealing with these ethically controversial issues, it is obvious that international experience should not be ignored as they try to find a way forward.

In Switzerland the discussions and challenges surrounding assisted suicide are increasing rather than decreasing. Contrary to the idea that a liberalisation of assisted suicide would lead to fewer debate, tensions and difficulties are increasing. My observation, and thesis, indicates that practices such as assisted suicide cannot be “normalised”, even in the medium and long term.

Developments

In recent years, one to two per cent of all deaths in Switzerland were due to assisted suicide. From an overall perspective, this practice is therefore still a marginal phenomenon. However, a look at the total number of assisted suicides per year gives a different impression, as this has increased more than fivefold in the years between 2008 and 2020, from an initial 253 to 1,251 deaths per year, a rising trend. The cause of death statistics for Switzerland only include those cases of assisted suicide in which persons resident in Switzerland were involved and the death was reported to the authorities. According to the Swiss Federal Statistical Office, in 2020, it was mainly people over the age of 64 who made use of assisted suicide. Detailed information on the underlying illnesses of the people affected in 2018 shows that about 40 per cent were affected by cancer, just under 12 per cent by diseases of the nervous system, a further 12 per cent by cardiovascular diseases and just over a third by other illnesses, including dementia and depression. There are currently seven right-to-die organisations in Switzerland which play a leading role in a typical assisted suicide procedure. They work closely with doctors who are prepared to prescribe a lethal drug, generally Pentobarbital. The data reflects an ambivalent picture: on the one hand, the proportion of assisted suicide cases is relatively low in relation to all deaths and, for example, in comparison to the large number of people who die in Switzerland in a state of deep sedation until death; on the other hand, the number of assisted suicides in Switzerland has risen sharply in recent years.

Perceptions and assessments

Since the 1990s, the public perception and assessment of assisted suicide in Swiss society has changed from an initially cautious and sceptical attitude towards broad acceptance. While the debates in other countries are characterised by relatively sharp controversies between those in favour and those against, public discourse in Switzerland has been less polarised. There are indications of a certain normalisation of the situation, the strongest sign is that Switzerland has so far refrained from regulating assisted suicide in a separate law. The results of a recently-published study on the opinions of Swiss people over the age of 55 regarding assisted suicide confirm these impressions.: The survey showed that over four-fifths of respondents support legal assisted suicide, almost two-thirds can imagine asking for assisted suicide themselves at some point, and that almost one-third are considering becoming members of an right-to-die organisation in the near future, with one-twentieth of respondents already being members at the time of the survey in 2015. Among people with a higher level of education and older people aged between 65 and 74, approval of assisted suicide and corresponding practices was higher than among less educated, younger and very old people; approval was also significantly lower among religious practitioners.

Sensitive topics

The fact that assisted suicide enjoys broad support in Swiss society as a whole does not mean that there are not difficult and controversial aspects relating to its practice. Relevant topics include, in particular, places of death, authorisation criteria and procedures.

Places of death: Assisted suicide is permitted also for mentally ill persons in psychiatric clinics, but the federal court recommends great caution here and requires two psychiatric expert opinions to ensure that the person willing to die is capable of judgement with regard to the desire to commit suicide. Although assisted suicide for children and adolescents has hardly been an issue in Switzerland to date, the corresponding debates are currently being held in Canada and elsewhere. The question of whether people in prison also have a right to make use of assisted suicide, has been the subject of intense debate in Switzerland for years, with a generally positive response. The question of whether right-to-die organisations should be given access to acute hospitals and nursing homes is still the subject of controversial debate, with regulations varying from hospital to hospital, nursing home to nursing home

Authorisation criteria: With regard to the admission criteria for persons willing to die, the capacity for judgement is at the centre of attention: while the importance of the criterion is undisputed in itself, there is a struggle for reliable standards and procedures to reliably test this criterion. Since the publication of the SAMS ethical guidelines Management of Dying and Death in 2018, the criterion for end of life and, depending on this, that of unbearable suffering have received new attention due to an objection by the Swiss Medical AssociationFMH. While the guidelines are based on the criterion of unbearable suffering, the FMH wants to stick to the near end of life. It is certainly difficult to diagnose the existence of unbearable suffering, as the international debate on the significance and assessment of existential (neither physical nor psychological) suffering shows. This difficulty is illustrated by the debate that has been going on for several years in Switzerland about so-called old-age suicide and the inherent criterion of tiredness of life. At the centre of the dispute is the legally difficult question of whether a doctor is also allowed to prescribe a lethal drug to a healthy person.

Procedures: Here the role of the medical profession and right to die organisations is by far the most important issue. In contrast to the physician-centred models in Belgium, Canada and the Netherlands, the Swiss model of assisted suicide is based on the idea that every person has the right to end their life and may call on the help of any other person to do so. Although the medical profession is usually involved in the process, the management of the procedure is normally the responsibility of a right-to-die organisation. This division of responsibilities is always up for debate when legal regulations are being considered, in which doctors should tend to take the lead in the process due to their professional background. There is also a debate about how and by whom compliance with the authorisation criteria should or could be monitored, whereby it remains to be decided whether this should be carried out before or after the death. At present, a certain amount of monitoring takes place following a suicide, insofar as the authorities investigate the cases afterwards. There is also debate as to whether Pentobarbital is a suitable means of suicide, especially if this barbiturate is not administered intravenously but taken orally; there is no knowledge of how many cases are currently administered intravenously and by whom an infusion is then set up. Last but not least, consideration has already been given to the use of lethal drugs, such as helium gas, which can be obtained over the counter.

Attempts at regulation

Political efforts to regulate assisted suicide in Switzerland in a more nuanced way than today have been made since the 1990s but have remain largely without consequences to date. In relevant judgements by the Federal Supreme Court or in statements by the Federal Department of Justice and Police, reference is regularly made to the ethical guidelines of the SAMS. These are classified as soft law and are therefore not legally binding, even though their content has become the subject of dispute. The National Advisory Commission on Biomedical Ethics (NCE) had already recommended more far-reaching legal regulation in 2005 as part of a detailed opinion on the subject; in the opinion of the NCE at the time, the review of authorisation criteria, a justifiable regulation of assisted suicide for the mentally ill, children and adolescents and state supervision of right-to-die organisations, should be ensured by law. The question is what form a legal regulation can take that grants the medical profession far-reaching powers but at the same time prevents medical paternalism (in favour of or against assisted suicide). From the perspective of Swiss experience, this is “a square circle”: either the doctors retain the final decision on who receives the barbiturate, or official access rules are established, the review of which does not generally require medical expertise.

The outlook

In the short and medium term, it can be assumed that the number of assisted suicides in Switzerland will continue to rise. The coronavirus pandemic and the particular difficulties faced by nursing homes during this time are likely to exacerbate this increase. In view of these expectations and the legislative processes in other European countries, pressure is likely to increase in Switzerland to create a legal regulation. Overall, I think politically it will be important to create a legal regulation, in order to ensure legal equality and legal certainty on the one hand and prevention of abuse and expansion on the other. At the centre of social-ethical reflection is the challenge of learning to deal with the pluralism of different ideas of a good death and to develop and establish alternative models to medically assisted dying. The thesis I mentioned at the beginning is confirmed today: assisted suicide in Switzerland can hardly be normalised; new problems, challenges and demands are constantly arising. Suicide, whether with or without the help of another person, always means an existential transgression that defies normalisation.