Northern Ireland's first gay rugby team, the Ulster Titans, has been denounced by an evangelical Protestant politician as being bigoted against heterosexuals. Ulster Titans team members Edwin Poots, who is Northern Ireland's Sports Minister, told the Northern Ireland Assembly in Belfast that the Titans were guilty of discrimination, reports the BBC. "I just cannot fathom why people see the necessity to develop an apartheid in sport," said Poots. "It would be unacceptable to produce an all-black rugby team or an all-white team or an all-Chinese team. To me it's equally unacceptable to produce an all-homosexual rugby team." "I find it remarkable that people who talk so much about inclusivity and about having an equal role in society would then go down the route of exclusion." The team, however, say that a few of the squad's 25 players are heterosexuals and the team welcomes players of all backgrounds. Ulster Titans co-founder, Declan Lavery, describes the team is 'flabbergasted' by the comments. "When the club was set up it welcomed members regardless of their age, creed, religion, sexual orientation or whatever, and that's how it continues," he says. "Yes, it was primarily something established as a vehicle for gay people, but that doesn't mean somebody who isn't gay can't join. Everyone is welcome." While the Titans are the first gay rugby team in Northern Ireland, the most religiously conservative part of the United Kingdom, such teams are well established in Britain, while the Republic of Ireland got its first primarily gay rugby team, the Emerald Warriors, in 2003. The Gay Rugby World Cup takes place in Dublin in June. Poots' political party, the Democratic Unionists, was founded by Protestant evangelist Ian Paisley, who today leads the Northern Ireland government. In 1977, Paisley led a campaign called Save Ulster From Sodomy that sought to keep homosexual acts outlawed in Northern Ireland. However, a European Court of Human Rights ruling forced Britain to decriminalise homosexuality in Northern Ireland in 1982.
Credit: GayNZ.com News Staff
First published: Wednesday, 20th February 2008 - 5:01pm