Leading sporting bodies are commencing their new seasons by calling full-time on their previous links with the LGBT campaign group Stonewall.
Next season, neither Premiership Rugby nor soccer’s Football Association (FA) and Premier League will be sporting Rainbow Laces—an offshoot of Stonewall—nor rainbow armbands. Instead, both authorities propose to launch their own initiatives for ‘LGBT history month,’ scheduled for February 2026, and similar unspecified campaigns with unspecified partners.
This marks the end of a pattern going back to at least 2013. While criticisms of Stonewall abound—not least for its self-destructive embrace of transgender ideology—the organisations have quietly explained the decision as due to the growth of in-house expertise in ‘fighting bigotry’ within the league and its clubs, according to Telegraph Sport.
The FA was already in conflict with Stonewall after accepting the Supreme Court decision on women’s single-sex spaces, a move the lobbyists claimed was
too soon, before the implications of the Supreme Court’s ruling has been worked through by lawyers and politicians or before statutory guidance has been issued.
Critics of earlier sporting cooperation with Stonewall pointed to its role in creating compelled speech, particularly for Christian and Muslim players made to endorse the cause. There was also wider concern that the emphasis on ‘inclusion’ was leading to players born male being allowed to compete in women’s sports.
