Rainbow Armbands and Religious Messaging

A liberal perspective on the Marc Guehi and Sam Morsy debacle

Photo by Steve Johnson on Unsplash

In the last two rounds of Premier League football, players have been wearing rainbow armbands in support of the Rainbow Laces Campaign which, in conjunction with Stonewall, seeks to advance LGBTQ+ acceptance in sport. Crystal Palace defender, Marc Guehi, caused controversy over the last few days for having written “Jesus loves you” on his armband one day and “I love Jesus” on another. The Football Association (FA) has kit regulations against religious messaging so there has been considerable discussion about whether he should be disciplined for this in the news and on social media. It has been decided by the FA that he should not but that he and his club should be reminded of the rules.

Most of the discussion, however, has centred around two related issues, both of which, I would suggest, are largely irrelevant from a liberal freedom of expression perspective. The first was what Guehi’s messaging meant and whether it was positive or negative towards LGBTQ acceptance. That is, was he saying “I, as a Christian, support Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Queer people’s right to be Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Queer and believe that Jesus does too?” Or was he indicating that he qualified his acceptance of LGBTQ people with the teachings of his Christian faith and saying something more like, “Homosexuality is a sin but Jesus loves everyone including LGBTQ people. I wish they would turn from their sin and embrace Christ.” This second interpretation is often referred to as “Love the sinner. Hate the sin.” Guehi’s own explanation of the meaning did not entirely clear this up although it ruled out hostility and a wish to discriminate against LGBTQ people in football,

I think the message was pretty clear to be honest. It was a message of love and truth as well, and a message of inclusivity so I think it speaks for itself.

The second point of contention on both mainstream media and social media was to do with Ipswich’s Sam Morsy who simply declined to wear an armband supporting LGBTQ acceptance at all on the grounds of his Muslim faith. If there is talk of the FA disciplining Mr. Guehi for signalling his religious commitments by writing on his armband but not of disciplining Mr. Morsy for signalling his by not wearing an armband at all, would this constitute a double standard that privileged Muslim beliefs over Christian ones?

From a pure ‘freedom of belief and speech’ perspective in the abstract, both men have the absolute right to express their religious views either by actively stating them or declining to state anything in contravention of them. This is the case whether Guehi was conveying that acceptance of homosexuality, bisexuality and trans identity is compatible with his Christian faith or that it is not. People also have the right to express positive or negative views on this subject or refrain from affirming any views on it due to beliefs that are not religious.

However, this did not occur in the abstract or in a neutral public space. It happened when the men were at work. There is not an expectation of absolute free expression in places of work. Employees are quite reasonably expected to address work-related issues during working hours. However, people do, of course, naturally speak about or reference beliefs they hold at work and so policies exist which do more or less well at upholding the principle of freedom of belief and speech in the workplace. The best ones aim to remain neutral on issues of politics, philosophy and religion, make reasonable accommodations for employees’ deeply held beliefs where needed, mind their own business about what those beliefs are and refrain from interfering with the expression of them outside the workplace except in cases where an employee has said something that causes reasonable concern about their suitability to do their job. Many employers or regulating bodies require employees not to engage in political, religious or philosophical messaging while performing a public facing job and the FA is one of them. In this case, Guehi broke the kit rule about religious messaging while Morsy did not.

This is unsatisfactory, however, because the context in which both players were acting was one of pre-existing political messaging. Both Guehi’s decision to add to or qualify the message with his own beliefs and Morsy’s decision not to participate in it because of his beliefs should be understood as responses to beliefs they were being presented with. Guehi is conveying “Yes, and…” or “Yes, but…” while Morsy is conveying “No.” From a liberal perspective, if an organisation is going to engage in any form of political or religious or otherwise ideological messaging, it should have policies which allow individuals to adapt them to accommodate their own beliefs or opt out.

The basic template that I help employers customise when writing their own antidiscrimination policies to ensure that freedom of belief and speech are protected looks like this and is to be found in The Counterweight Handbook:

“1. Make a general statement of adherence to relevant antidiscrimination law. Such laws typically involve straightforward opposition to discrimination on the grounds of characteristics like race, sex, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability or genetic information, pregnancy, and marital status.

2. Make a commitment to treat all employees with equal courtesy and consideration and to refrain from any prejudice or hostility on the grounds of the above and ask all employees to do the same.

3. Take care to specifically state that employees are free to oppose discrimination on the grounds of their own political, philosophical, or religious beliefs, which they need not share publicly.

4. Make a commitment to not impose any religious, philosophical, or political beliefs on others at work and require employees to do the same.

5. Make a commitment to not tell employees that their particular religious, philosophical, or political beliefs are false or immoral and ask employees to do the same when at work.

6. Make clear that any demands that the company adopt any particular religious, philosophical, or political belief that goes beyond existing antidiscrimination law or company policy and that is contradictory to other lawful religious, philosophical, or political beliefs will be rejected.

7. Make clear that these statements and commitments are taken very seriously and that any contravention of them will lead to appropriate disciplinary action.”

Both Christianity and Islam are lawful religious beliefs and both can highly plausibly be interpreted as holding that homosexuality is a sin although not all Christians or Muslims interpret their faith this way. Christians and Muslims have the same obligation as everybody else not to be abusive towards or discriminate against same-sex attracted people, but no obligation to endorse messaging that they believe will harm them and to be untrue. I strongly suspect that this is what Guehi’s reference to ‘love’, ‘truth’ and ‘inclusion’ meant. Morsy’s non-messaging gives no indication of his feelings towards LGB or TQ people and we don’t actually have any right to know what they are. We only have the right to expect certain standards of behaviour and there is no indication that his has given any cause for concern. I very much wish that nobody believed homosexuality to be morally wrong, but a lot of Christians and a greater proportion of Muslims do and they must have the right to both hold and express this belief. Equally, those of us who disagree with them must have the right to both believe and say that this belief of theirs is morally wrong.

In a liberal society, we seek to co-exist, not to compromise. That is, we aim for a society in which there is a consensus that people can believe and say that others are factually and/or morally wrong and commit to not harming them or denying their freedom to believe, speak and live according to their beliefs. This principle should be enacted on a number of levels - legal, institutional and personal - and it should apply to all kinds of beliefs and ideas. The law should protect freedom of belief and speech. Institutions and organisations should commit to not institutionalising any religious, philosophical or political ideology (except religious, philosophical or political ones, obviously). Individuals who value the principles underlying our liberal democracies should commit to limiting their attempts to get others to adopt their worldview to trying to convince those who have agreed to engage with them of the truth and value of it. There should be no prioritisation of one kind of idea over another. Deeply held religious views should merit no more accommodation than any other kind of deeply held views, but nor should they merit any less.

The FA is not a religious, philosophical or political organisation. It is a sporting organisation. The rules under which Marc Guehi could have been penalised state that religious, political and personal slogans, statements and images are prohibited. It notes that ‘political’ is harder to define than ‘religious’ or ‘personal’ but includes “any organisation whose aims/actions are likely to offend a notable number of people.” This is unsatisfactory phrasing. A notable number of people can be offended by almost anything. Photos of my cooking once led to a lengthy Reddit thread discussing whether the English are even human. Certainly, a notable number of people are opposed to specific aims and actions of Stonewall especially when it comes to its stance on the inclusion of trans women in women’s sports, an issue that a significant majority of Britons (including me) oppose for reasons of safety and fairness. However, rather than considering whether people are likely to be offended, I would suggest it is better to think in terms of the policy statement 6. above, “any particular religious, philosophical, or political belief…that is contradictory to other lawful religious, philosophical, or political beliefs.” If the slogan, statement or image which you are trying to get everybody to wear would require anybody to convey something they don’t think is true or ethical, don’t try to get everybody to convey it.

Manchester United’s LGBTQ+ supporters’ group, ”Rainbow Devils” (not a name likely to inspire Christians or Muslims with trust) got things precisely backwards when speaking of the decision not to wear a jacket in support of the campaign after one player said he did not want to,

"We respect the right of this player to have his own views, whilst also feeling disappointed that he put the rest of the squad into a position where they felt that they couldn't wear their jackets.

It is extremely unlikely that one person could put everybody else into that position but much more likely that everybody else could dissuade one person who wished to abstain. It is very difficult to be the lone dissenting voice in a group and liberals should work consistently against the establishment of norms which make this harder, even when we believe the dissenting voice is wrong. By protecting the lone voices in the majority whom we believe to be wrong, we protect our own when the majority thinks we are wrong. Supporters of the rights of sexual minorities should know this better than anyone.