In Photos: NFL community gets together in LA to celebrate Pride Month
The National Football League is taking part in Pride Month, and this year, the league gathered in Los Angeles to celebrate the LGBTQ+ community.
The NFL participated in the pride parade that took place in LA over the June 11th weekend. Its official Instagram account posted several photos of the event as well.
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🏈🏳️🌈 https://t.co/W4MJu5yXdw
The official league Instagram account shared its thoughts on the month-long celebration of equality:
“The NFL family came through for the #Pride parade in Los Angeles this weekend. ❤️🌈”
The history of Pride Month
According to Them.com, Pride Month is a celebration of the LGBTQ+ community. It began after a series of riots to protest police harassment of the gay community (e.g., the Stonewall Riots, the Los Angeles Riots at Cooper Do-Nuts, and Compton’s Cafeteria in San Francisco). In the aftermath of the riots to protest the treatment of the gay community, organizers sought to grow their movement and advocacy by holding a march to Central Park in New York City and adopted “Gay Pride” as their theme.
In the decades since the 1970s, when the riots originated, Pride Month has come to reflect the history and the celebration of the LGBTQ+ community. The NFL, alongside other major sports leagues like the NBA and MLB, has also participated in these celebrations in recent years.
The NFL and LGBTQ inclusion
The NFL (and most professional sports leagues) has come a long way in becoming more inclusive with regard to the LGBTQ community. Reportedly, in 2013, 62 football players stated they were supportive of the gay community, and this was before the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide.
Outsports.com outlined many of the ways that the league has taken steps to be more inclusive, which include (1) the league adding sexual-orientation protection to the collective bargaining agreement (CBA) in 2011, (2) Steve Tish, New York Giants owner, appearing in New York state ads supporting same-sex marriage, (3) the New England Patriots, led by owner Bob Kraft, signing an amicus brief in support of gay marrige for the SCOTUS decision that legalized same-sex marriage (the Patriots were the only NFL team that signed the brief), and (4) the NFL adding the definition of same-sex as part of its 2015 AIDS awareness informative campaign.
Although no active star NFL player publicly identifies as gay (Carl Nassib became the first openly gay player in the NFL to play a regular season game when he announced in 2021), the league does its part to support the LGBTQ+ community, especially during Pride Month in June.