COLLINGWOOD president Eddie McGuire has launched a passionate defence of the AFL’s endorsement of the ‘Yes’ campaign for the same-sex marriage postal survey.
The AFL received both praise and backlash for committing its support for marriage equality.
Responding to Sam Newman’s criticism of the move, McGuire said the AFL was showing that it stood for something.
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“There is an old saying that if you don’t stand for something, you stand for nothing,” McGuire said on The Footy Show.
McGuire’s club, Collingwood, is one of the clubs to have pledged its support for marriage equality.
The Pies president said the AFL’s move — which included temporarily replacing the ‘AFL’ sign outside its headquarters with a ‘Yes’ sign — was about showing people of all backgrounds they were welcome to be a part of football.
“If you put to the AFL, ‘do you stand for discrimination?’ they’d have put ‘no’ up on the wall,” McGuire said.
“Because the AFL stands for a situation that I think should be the lifeblood of our country, and that is that ‘it’s not what you are, it’s who you are — it’s what you contribute’.”
“But Sam — you can’t have the AFL saying to young kids ‘you can come here and be safe. If you’re a 14 or 15 year old and you’re gay, you can come to a football club, you can be part of it.’
“We’re inviting women in, we’re inviting people of all nationalities — it’s just saying that they are welcoming and for equality. That’s all it is.”
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