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Pride 2025 - Jim McIlroy of Bohemian FC
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The sporting pitch has long been a battleground for social progress, and few fronts have been more challenging than the inclusion of LGBTQI+ individuals. In this thoughtful conversation, Jim McIlroy of Bohemian FC's Gay Bohs offers a candid look at what genuine inclusion means in Irish football today.
Founded in 2016 after Bohemian FC publicly supported marriage equality, Gay Bohs reclaimed a slur and transformed it into a symbol of pride. Since 2017, Dalymount Park has flown the Pride flag at every match—the only League of Ireland ground to do so. "That simple step made me feel a little bit more at ease," reflects McIlroy, "showing support, showing solidarity."
The stark reality remains that LGBTQI+ participation in sport lags significantly behind the general population. Research reveals that around 55% of LGBT individuals aren't active enough to maintain good health, compared to much lower figures for others. McElroy explains how many queer people gravitate toward solitary sports rather than team environments, where "locker room culture" can feel unwelcoming.
Most concerning is what McIlroy describes as a societal pendulum swinging back from progress: "We're probably at a point on that journey that is particularly challenging for LGBTQI+ people, particularly for transgender people." Despite Ireland having diversity policies and inclusion strategies, McElroy warns about "pinkwashing" and the creation of documents without meaningful change. "It's not enough to say, 'Oh well, we did the survey and that's it, it's done,'" he cautions. "We're setting ourselves up to do a lot of hard work over the next five, ten years."
This conversation arrives at a pivotal moment when corporations are quietly withdrawing support for Pride events and sporting bodies face pressure to roll back inclusive policies. McIlroy's powerful call for allyship reminds us that progress requires courage: "Now is the time for people to show their true colours and support."
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Hello and welcome to the Sport for Business podcast. I'm your host, rob Hartnett, and today, as part of a series looking at pride, I'm delighted to be joined by Jim McElroy, who is part of the Gaybos committee at Bohemian FC. Jim, you're very welcome onto the podcast.
Speaker 2:Good morning, Rob, and thanks very much for having me on the podcast with you.
Speaker 1:I marched in Pride a couple of years ago with the GAA pushing a very large Gaelic football, and it was one of the most fun experiences that I've had in Dublin city centre. One of the biggest smiles on my face, though, was when I was talking to PJ Gallagher, who was walking alongside the Gay Bows, and the enthusiasm and the just sheer delight in being there able to express the way that you live your life as part of a sporting organisation. It was really moving. Tell us a little bit about where the Gay Bows came from.
Speaker 2:So I suppose it goes back to the middle of the last decade. Bohemian Football Club took, I suppose at the time and even still today I think it would be viewed as possibly such the slightly unusual step of taking a very public stand at the time of the marriage equality referendum. And it came out in support of marriage equality because I suppose that fits in with the club's general, you know, mission and view, that you know football is for the many, not the few, and that football can be a really good force for good within our society. It was around the same time that a fan group of LGBTQI plus supporters was formed. That group took on the name Gay Bows, which sort of just came to them out of the blue. For all of us that remember Gayburn and also slur the connotation that the phrase has, I think, can appreciate how using that name for a fan group can be quite effective and empowering. The fan group itself was formed a year after the marriage equality referendum in 2016. One of the first things the fan group did was put together a gay bows flag to be flown at the tramway end of dailyman parker home games and also at away games, and actually to this day it flies, you know, to every home game and at many away games. If you're in dailyman parker watching a game on loitv, you'll often see it. That was the beginning of boemian Football Club's involvement in actively supporting LGBTQI+.
Speaker 2:So it was around 2017 when the club took the position that it was going to lead in terms of visibility and bought a rainbow flag a pride flag, which it flew for the first time at home games in 2017 in Dalyman Park, and that flag now flies at every home game. To my knowledge, it's the only League of Ireland football ground where the pride flag is part of the match day experience. That's 52 weeks in a year. If you go to any men's or women's League of Ireland game in Dalyman Park, you'll see there are five flagpoles. At the tramway end of the ground, at the end of the Jody stand, the Bose flag flies, the Irish flag flies and so on, and one of those flags is the pride flag. It always flies. It was a simple gesture that the club took on to show their support and solidarity for LGBTQI plus people, but it was also a brave thing to do because it was the first of its kind step and a powerful statement for LGBTQI plus people like I know from my own experience.
Speaker 2:I wasn't a fan of Bose at the time. I'm quite a recent fan. My husband and I moved into the Dublin 7 area late 2015, early 2016, and it was shortly afterwards that we started supporting Bose and joined the club. I remember the very first home game that I was at. One of the very first things that I saw in the ground was the LGBTQI plus flag pride flag flying and that had a big impact on me immediately. It made me feel a little bit more at ease and made me feel that this club, this institution or whatever, was there showing support, showing solidarity. A simple step, but quite a significant step as well, I think.
Speaker 1:Yeah, very much so, and against the background of football at the time, we argue still to this day that it has not been easy to be a gay man or part of the LGBTQI community because there are so few role models. You kind of have to ask the question why is that? Is it that football just doesn't attract gay people, which is highly unlikely, or is it that the environment is not conducive to feeling comfortable? So you call it a simple step? By its very nature, that willingness to express an openness to football being for everybody would be seen in particular by a young gay man or a gay woman who wants to play football and who is good at playing football and who wants to be part of a club, to actually feel yeah. This is for me, even if I don't see other gay people that are actually playing football at the top level around the world yeah, very much.
Speaker 2:So there are a lot of complex factors at play, still at play, unfortunately, in football. That means that we don't see the visibility within the sport, particularly in the men's game you know, of LGBTQI plus people we don't have and young people don't have. You know, as many role models who are LGBTQI plus to look up to as there might be in other contexts. It's an ongoing issue in football. I mean, we do know also, rob, that there is an issue with participation for LGBTQI plus people in sport generally. There was a report that was done in the UK, published around 2016.
Speaker 1:I remember that it was a significant presentation in terms of people engaging.
Speaker 2:I found that around 55% of LGBT men and 56% of LGBT women weren't active enough to maintain good physical and mental health in adulthood. That compared with much lower figures around 33% and 45% respectively for men and women within the general population, so that clearly pointed to a problem in the UK which you could surmise might be similar to the situation here in Ireland. Did that impact?
Speaker 1:on you and your husband. Did you play sport when you were a younger man?
Speaker 2:No, now I'm quite active in sport. Now I would run marathons, maybe one or two a year. I go to the gym and my husband is big, big into going to the gym. It's interesting you ask that question, rob because they're solitary sports. You could be, you can become part of a group and a training group, a running club or whatever, but you can also engage in them in a solitary manner. They're not team sports and that's another thing that comes across in research where lgbtqi plus people might be more likely to avoid team sport environments, particularly in adolescence, and, you know, may end up either disengaging from sport completely or just engaging in sports where it's a solitary pursuit. Actually no one has ever asked me that question before.
Speaker 2:I don't think being gay growing up, realising that I was gay as a teenager, actually had an impact on my participation in sport.
Speaker 2:I don't think I was just very interested in taking part in sport as a kid. I remember in first year in second level school the PE teacher we had. He was a lovely man, he was a former international rugby player for England. We were doing this session in the gym in the second or third week of first year where you had to run from one wall to the first line and back, then to the second line and back and so on, and I mean I wasn't unfit, but I was obviously quite unfit and I remember him pulling me up halfway through with concern and his voice calling me aside and said you know, are you OK, jim? Are you about to have a heart attack? So I was terribly sporty, naturally, and it's something that I came into in my own time, like in late adolescence, early adulthood. I don't think being gay had a part to play for me, but unfortunately, being LGBTQI plus does have a part to play for accessing sport in the first place or for maintaining participation in it.
Speaker 1:And it's a big. It is so important not only from the physical but also from the mental well-being. If you're feeling as though society is not 100 welcoming of you, then that can spiral by not being involved in physical activity as well. So it's got many different ways in which it's wrong and something that we need to change. You mentioned the importance of team sport for people as they're growing up and growing into their adulthood. Team sport is far more overrepresented amongst young people. So if that's a challenging period for somebody who is recognising the fact that they are gay, that will be a challenge.
Speaker 1:There's this notion of the locker room culture which sport has kind of always worn proudly. In many ways it's increasingly across women's sport as well, but it was traditionally a male sports environment. Do you feel, from your own connection to the club and the many different areas in which that can roll out, do you feel that there is an awareness enough of an awareness within sport that that locker room culture of old, somewhat mythologised in many ways, is in need of change, in need of a refresh, so that it's not exclusive feeding into the toxicity of where sport has been in the past?
Speaker 2:Generally speaking, there is a view within sport and wider society that the things that were taken as being OK or taken for granted in the past, not all of those are OK now. But by the same token, I think a lot of us will be aware that in recent years, lot of us will be aware that in recent years the pendulum in terms of where we're going, even within society generally, has stopped swinging towards the progressive end of the spectrum and is coming back historically. That's part of how things change anyway. Over time. What's it back and forth? And we're on the less progressive part of the swing now. I I think I know from talking to people that are very intimately involved in the club that the club is very progressive and aware of the need for explicit education around LGBTQI plus experience and visibility, and the club has engaged with the Shout Out organisation to have programmes within the club for coaches and for players, and that undoubtedly does open up a discourse and has a positive effect that might not otherwise be there. But then one can only imagine that in the very unique world of professional football the atmosphere or the reality in a locker room is probably quite different to what it is in a classroom or in an office space, and so there is probably still opportunity for change there, I know.
Speaker 2:Just looking at the National LGBTIQ plus inclusion strategy two that was launched by the government just over a week ago, there's a finding from a report that Sport Ireland commissioned back in 2021, the Irish Sports Monitor report.
Speaker 2:It showed that while 70% of people in Ireland surveyed as part of that agree that sports clubs do actively welcome those from diverse ethnic backgrounds, it's a lower proportion that actually feel that sports clubs are welcoming to those from the lgbtq plus community only 59.
Speaker 2:So it still is, you know, more than half that feel that there is.
Speaker 2:Maybe you know there has been like good, positive cultural changes within sports clubs across the country, but it's lower level of welcome for lgbtq plus people than it is for people from diverse ethnic backgrounds.
Speaker 2:That does point to the idea that the situation probably now is better for lgbtq plus people than it was 10 or 15 years ago in sports clubs and organizations across the country, but that it's not where it should be and that there is still a very long road to travel to get to where we hope to be. We're probably at a point on that journey that is particularly challenging for LGBTQI plus people, particularly for transgender people, because the court decision in the English Supreme Court within the last couple of months has already had a big ramification on a variety of policies and procedures from various bodies in the UK, sporting related and otherwise, added more fuel to that fire of vitriol and hate let's call it what it is that is directed towards transgender people. Many trans individuals and the trans community are used as a scapegoat in a very vicious culture war In the context of sport. That would be a huge concern for me and for many other people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's always something that I'd feel very uncomfortable about the transgender population is a go on to otherwise reputable radio programmes and spout the most unbelievable vitriol and hatred, kind of puts sport into the dead centre of the whole trans debate, which I don't think is fair on the transgender population, and it just seems to have become a lightning rod, like there are challenges which have been sort of played out, but people are working their way through them until somebody says, well, actually, no, let's just stop there, and then all of a sudden there's this chilling effect that everybody falls into line, and that is exactly what's been happening. It's very deeply worrying.
Speaker 2:I mean I know from my own personal experience having a small number of trans friends who are involved in sport, talking to those people over the last number of years, the hugely positive impact that participation in sport here in Ireland as a trans person, as an open trans person the positive impact that that has for them, not just on their physical health or their mental health but their sense of community, their sense of belonging and how their participation is not adversely affecting anybody at all, and the the idea that now that could become under threat and that people in that situation are made to feel rotten, you know, just for being themselves. It's really mind boggling and very sad. I don't know if you saw within the last week or so Simone Biles, the US gymnast, made a public statement around this US gymnast made a public statement around this and how you are trying to deny trans people the ability to access sport and participate in sport is you have a situation where you are attacking children effectively and you're not considering the specifics and the uniqueness of every individual's circumstance and their participation in their sport and how. This was just really unfair. I think her statement was getting at the idea that if there are, at a very elite level issues around fairness that some people have a concern about. The way to go about that is not to do what is being done here and across the water in North America and elsewhere right now.
Speaker 2:To go back, I think your original question was around locker room culture. I think we are in a better position generally now in sport than we would have been 10 or 15 years ago in this country, but we're not where we would hope to be. There are significant challenges right now. I think now is the time for individuals that really want to be allies to LGBTQI plus people to make sure that they stand up and that they are heard and that they don't shy away from making you know decisions or pronouncements and letting people know their opinion. This is the time when people really do need to stand tall and resolute. And you know, I think you can see something similar around corporate involvement in an event like dublin pride. I don't know if you saw there last week or maybe just a few days ago actually, in the irish times, an article with jed dowling, one of the co-chair dub Pride, where no names mentioned of the companies, but I think it was just over 25% of the 40 or so large multinational companies from the US who have been supportive of Dublin Pride in recent years have pulled away and we need, for all of us as individuals, to make sure that we don't individually do something similar, Because there can always be corporate speak around. Oh no, we're just modifying our DEI policies. We're not moving away at all and our values are still the same, but we're not going to support pride anymore.
Speaker 2:Now I don't buy that argument myself. If it's OK for a corporation to justify that sort of stance and action, that's one thing, but as individuals we can't. That old adage of you're either with us or against us, I mean there is a certain truth in that. You know, there does come a time where you do have to stand up and show your colours. I think now for greater visibility, greater participation, greater support for LGBTQI plus people in sport, we can clearly see that it is a more challenging time. We do have a long way still to go, and now is the time for people to show their true colours and their support.
Speaker 1:It is sad that, even going back to what Simone Biles said a couple of years ago, that would have just been the right thing to do, whereas now we're actually looking at it as being a brave thing to do. The climate and the way that it's changed, I must admit now I mean we work across the sporting and the business community. When I flagged that we were doing this series of interviews around pride, we've always kind of stood up. I'll come back to a thing that we did in Bank of Ireland a couple of years ago. But when we flagged that we were doing this series of interviews, nobody passed any note on it in a negative way. And then I was having a conversation with somebody and it came up as part of the conversation and even though they didn't say anything, they kind of raised their eyebrow a little bit about the unstated being and maybe I was just overly sensitive to it. Is that the right thing to be doing now, when you've got lots of US sports coverage and things like that? You've got lots of US sports coverage and things like that. If it had been said that would have just redoubled my efforts to agree that it is now that you have to stand up. I'll come back to that.
Speaker 1:We did an event probably five or six years ago in Bank of Ireland that Rory Best spoke at. Rory Best would be, you know, sort of alpha male unionist farming stock about as far from the LGBTQI sort of poster boy as you could imagine and I always felt that him being involved and saying that this is OK was really important in an audience that would otherwise have veered the other direction. So you're right, the allyship is huge. People have a choice. They could choose to advocate and be seen as advocating for women's sport, children's sport or sport for people with a disability, and part of the challenge is that DEI and inclusion generally is a very, very broad church, but the principles remain the same that you need to be open to everybody. Do you think that Irish sport is actually doing enough in this space at the moment?
Speaker 2:I think it varies across different sports, different NGBs, different organisations. At a macro level, you could argue that things are good. We have national policies that we wouldn't have had in the past. We have the diversity and inclusion policy in sport from Sport Ireland back from 2022 that lays out very clear objectives for NGBs within Irish sport over the next number of years. We have explicit mention of inclusivity and visibility in sport in the recently published National LGBTIQ Plus Inclusion Strategy. Number two from the government.
Speaker 2:Different national governing bodies in sport have their own published policies and we can all go online and read those. So that a positive rob. But you need individuals to lead on those and to really put effort in to make sure that the principles enshrined in those policies are actually brought into existence. You also run the risk sometimes if you have more policies and strategies and action plans that are published. There is a danger there as well, because that does allow you know a governing body or an individual organisation to say, look, we have this policy and actually we did have three audits over the last four years on this policy. We were able to tick all those boxes and so on. That's a real danger. You know that you end up with some sort of pinkwashing, if you like, with not an awful lot of meaningful you know, meaningful change. So I think it's very important that organisations and NGBs and even, at a higher level, the government and government departments it's really important not only that we have these strategies and policies and action plans in place, which, by and large, we do now and we didn't in the past, and it's important that good principles around inclusivity and participation and visibility for lgbtqi plus people are part of those, but it's really, really important that you have, you know, measurable actions that are targeted, assessed, reviewed and iterated over, and that LGBTQI plus people and stakeholders are part and parcel of that process, and that you're then in a position where two, three years down the line of a policy being introduced, you're actually able to say well, we were able to achieve X Y, z, we hit the mark on ABC and we clearly fell short on PQ, and this is now what we're going to do over the next two or three years. But that requires a huge amount of energy and determination on the part of specific individuals within different organisations, so you need people to take personal responsibility to get things done. So I think that we are in a situation now where maybe we weren't in the past and what might have seemed unimaginable to be in the past.
Speaker 2:I know from my own work on the Pride Committee at Bowes. In the last year, for example, we have been working with the FAI on an LGBTQI plus inclusivity in Irish football survey. It's a first of its kind survey looking at the experience of being an LGBTQI plus person in football in Ireland right now. What are the positives, what's the lived experience and what are the forms of discrimination or harassment? What are the forms of discrimination or harassment, what are the more general barriers and so on, and what can be done in the short and medium term to make football in Ireland more inclusive for LGBTQI plus people. I can see that there is a clear interest and desire among key individuals within the FAI to support this, to come up with later in this year policy and training recommendations that can then be piloted late in 2025 and early 2026.
Speaker 2:But even in that particular example, that's just the start of the process. It's not enough for Bose or for the FAI to say, oh well, we did the survey and that's it, it's done. We're really setting ourselves up to do a lot of hard work over the next five, 10 years on this particular initiative and that's the drive and the impetus that is needed. And ultimately, you know, rob to go back to the conversation that we were having earlier around allies and having to stand up it really does require, you know, people in decision-making positions in organizations to really take the bit between the teeth on this and make sure that it's prioritized and that we don't just end up with policy or strategy after policy after strategy, so we can all pat ourselves on the back and go oh no, we've loads of lovely verbose language and it's a really lengthy document and this is the fifth one published in 10 years. Job done? Because you know that's clearly not job done.
Speaker 1:It clearly needs to translate from paper or the equivalent of paper, to pitch in bold terms. And there is that sense that if everybody is responsible for it, then nobody is responsible for it. And you're right. It does require somebody to actually claim this as their own and to judge themselves in terms of how well it has gone down and how well it has improved. And it also it's really important that it should be voices like yours, so that it's the lived experience rather than the research based or the more academic and the drier, because you're right, it is far easier to actually publish a document which sets out a strategy than it is to deliver on that strategy.
Speaker 1:And sometimes we can stand accused, quite rightly, of picking and choosing the bits out of a strategy that worked and highlighting those, but then brushing the other ones off to the side, and sometimes it's the other ones that are the most important. Look, it's been a real pleasure talking to you. I love the idea that this is the start of the next phase, that you're thinking in terms of what the sporting environment will be like for generations to come and not just for you in the moment going along to watch bows against shamrock lovers or to see openly gay people happily getting involved in sport and playing, administering, volunteering, supporting all of those areas that you know. Sport is nothing if it's not open to everybody, and brilliant work that you've done so far, but I think you recognise the fact that you're only in that place yet and there is a long way to go. Thanks a million for taking the time to be with us today and for everything that you've done.
Speaker 2:Thanks very much, rob, a pleasure talking to you.
Speaker 1:Listen, thanks a million.
Speaker 2:Was that okay?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's fine. Yeah, it's the kind of thing that we're going to go quite deep into some of the areas, and I'm very conscious of the fact that I'm on the outside, and if you wake up every morning and think, well, okay, so this is my life, I wanted to be involved in sport and there are barriers to overcome for that to happen as comfortably as it would for me. But, yeah, we'll just have to keep on standing up. If ever you see anything that we're doing that you think we could be and should be doing better, then you have my details now and reach out to me.
Speaker 2:And I will do. Rob, Thanks very much. I really appreciate giving the club the opportunity to take part in something like this the reality on the ground in football is probably ble, a series of interviews with people who are living on the front line of the lgbtqi plus experience.
Speaker 1:Within irish sport, the sport for business podcast generally drops every tuesday evening coming up. We've got interviews with Kevin White, the Sporting Director par excellence within US College Sport, and with Noel Quinn, the Director of GAA Plus, at a very busy time of the year for the GAA season. If you want, you can subscribe to the Sport for Business podcast wherever you get your podcasts from, and if you want to know more about what we do across all areas of sport and business, you can find us at sportforbusinesscom. Thank you again for taking the time to listen and have a great day. Thank you.
