This October, it will be 30 years since UK tabloid The Sun ran an infamous story with the headline: “£1 Million Football Star: I AM GAY.” The story was based around soccer player Justin Fashanu, someone who has become a kind of reference point for talking about footballers coming out.
The story was printed with Fashanu’s consent, but much of it and the reaction to it embodied all the worst of homophobic reporting at the time.