G.K. Chesterton wrote that “private lives are more important than public reputations.” Like most of our forefathers, he would surely regard the modern preoccupation with wearing our private particularities on our sleeves as strange and disturbing.
This strangeness was evident in the recent insistence that club captains of Premier League football teams wear rainbow armbands in support of the charity Stonewall. Controversy ensued when the Ipswich Town captain Sam Morsy chose not to wear the garment, and the Crystal Palace and England defender Marc Guéhi wrote “Jesus Loves You” over his multi-coloured armband, prompting the deluded denizens of the Football Association to launch a ridiculous investigation.
Footballers, no less than all of us, should be free, for personal, religious reasons - or simply as a matter of taste - to choose to eschew such overtly political messages. Regardless of which, the FA’s decision to take guidance from an extreme organisation is reprehensible. After all, Stonewall have suggested that children “as young as two recognise their trans identity.”
Such extremism is incompatible with football’s essence. Soccer, like other sports, brings people together irrespective of what they do elsewhere. Importing divisive culture war issues into every sphere of our lives creates discord, the polar opposite of a unifying cohesion which sport, at its best, brings.
Perhaps because of football’s widespread appeal, this is not the first time it has been the subject of cultural assault. Fans had to endure the embarrassing spectacle of multimillionaire footballers on one knee at the behest of the Marxist ‘Black Lives Matter’. It’s self-explanatory that those living in palatial gated homes with private security should not be endorsing an extremist organisation which advocates ‘defunding the police’.
Identity politics which breaks society up into fragmented groups defined only by a shared single characteristic – generally not of their choice, like their race or sex - is worsening and ought to be challenged, as should ostentation about personal identity. The preoccupation with narrow ways of defining individuals ultimately erodes our shared sense of who we are as a people, for divisive identity politics eliminates consideration of what unites us, instead perpetuating endless atomising gripes and grudges.
Contemporary America illustrates how this dangerous mentality can tear societies apart. Britain must not go the same way. For the kind of things that matter to us all – the state of the economy, the scale of immigration, the fear and reality of crime – affect lives regardless of particular identities. To resist this discordant fad, we must be bolder in the surety that though people should be free to believe what they want, insisting that the private becomes public, and so pushing politically correct mandatory gestures, only ends in disharmony.
As Chesterton knew, what people do in their private lives, and how they go about their own business, is a matter for them. Restating this simple truth in response to strange, ugly identity politics as sensible footballers like England’s Marc Guéhi have done, is a task for us all.
