Britain takes anti-gay slurs seriously.

Very seriously (via Queerty):

Two football supporters have become the first fans to be convicted of chanting homophobic abuse.

James Monkhouse and Michael Church, followers of Norwich City, were found guilty by Norwich Magistrates’ Court of disorderly behaviour after reportedly shouting anti-gay chants aimed at Brighton football club fans earlier this year.

The defendants were filmed chanting the word “queer” from the stands, the court was told, and were later escorted out of the stadium by football intelligence officer PC Chris Watts…

Earlier this year the Football Association outlined its opposition to homophobia in the game, the FA’s director of corporate affairs, Simon Johnson, told PinkNews.co.uk: "The FA is leading the way on tackling homophobia in football and our work is becoming recognised across Europe. We underline our opposition to homophobia in our football for all strategy along with race and disability discrimination. Abuse of any such nature can now be tackled by the FA via sanctions and potential bans."

What else to say? That’s fucking awesome. Sport is, unfortunately, too often a refuge for homophobia and anti-gay sentiments. That Britain is tackling head-on the intolerance perpetuated by the casual use of anti-gay epithets is really admirable.

The men both denied they are homophobic, with Monkhouse telling the court that he “didn’t think the word queer was derogatory… It was meant to be a comic reply to what was said to us.” I somehow doubt that Monkhouse would have ever stopped believing he had the right to use “queer” as a “comic reply” if every gay person in Britain had patiently and calmly explained to him why it’s offensive. But now that he’s been yanked out of his seat for doing it, I bet he won’t use it again.

As an aside, British football fandom has had serious problems with racism, too. Black players were subjected to monkey chants and had bananas thrown on the field at them as recently as the 1980’s. In 1993, a zero-tolerance policy for racism was instituted and has been very successful, with racist chants having all but disappeared from football games. And the zero-tolerance policy also resulted in changing attitudes; people started to consider why it was that racist chants were, ya know, bad, and giving people a reason to examine their prejudices was an important step in combatting them. Now minority players and managers have way more opportunity and less resistance in Britain, for which they credit the 1993-instituted policy, which was coupled with an educational campaign about racism.