Voices: I helped David Beckham become a gay icon – now, hypocrisy is everywhere

Twenty years ago, the most popular man in the country at the time posed for the cover of the UK’s best-selling gay magazine.

I was deputy editor of Attitude when David Beckham, then captain of the England football team, bleached his hair and sat for our photographer. I saw the positive impact it had just as the country was emerging from a period of extreme tabloid homophobia – similar to the way trans people are demonised now.

In 2002, for a straight man to be found attractive by a gay man was seen as a threat that warranted a hostile response. Of course, Beckham didn’t change this single-handed, and homophobia persists today – but for this handsome, fashion-conscious icon of masculinity to state that he welcomed and celebrated the gay gaze was a cultural game-changer. He won over our hearts, as well as our more superficial instincts.

He’s currently in the process of trading away decades of goodwill. As his bank balance is going up, I think that in the eyes of much of the public, his credibility is going down. But this sorry episode contains a wider lesson about how inauthentic and broken the whole world truly is.

Today, it often feels like there are few people to look up to in public life. Almost everything is driven or corrupted by money. Our leaders are cynical, our journalists are compromised, and many of our heroes are hollow. Appalling politicians rebuild their reputations on reality TV; our democracy is owned by the billionaire media; apparently authentic “influencers” promote things they are paid to care about; and even on an individual level, almost all of the choices open to us are ethically dubious at best.

Reduced from citizens to “consumers”, most of us are part of this disconnection from integrity to the point where society is looking distinctly dystopian. We think signing e-petitions is enough; we buy fast fashion and tell ourselves – even as the world burns – that our brand choices are enough to save our children from the climate crisis.

Maybe money always overrides ethical considerations – but now the consequences are genuinely a threat to the survival of our children. I know how that sounds, but it is true.

How many people calling out Beckham still bank with Barclays, one of the leading UK funders of the fossil fuels that are already killing people, including LGBT+ people? How many are still drinking Coca-Cola, the world’s No 1 plastic polluter, even when we know microplastics are being detected in our blood? How many people tweet rage at protesters, telling them to “Go and protest in China!”, while continuing to buy Chinese-manufactured stuff, often for their kids – the same kids who at this point genuinely do not have a safe long-term future?

This isn’t airy-fairy “whataboutery”. It’s real, it’s dangerous, and it’s happening right now. Pakistan’s record monsoon affected tens of millions of people. In Nigeria, 600 people have died and 1.4 million have been displaced by recent floods. And 20,000 people are believed to have died as a result of the record-breaking European heatwave this summer. Where is the outrage? Where are the radio phone-ins and TV discussions for these people?

And this threat may overwhelm us all. As UN secretary general Antonio Guterres said at the Cop27 climate conference (sponsored by Coca-Cola!), we are “doomed” on our current path. Hundreds of millions of people, maybe more, may die: men, women, children, gay, straight, bi, trans, Black, brown and white people – and everyone else. And we are mostly sitting back watching it happen, praying someone else will force the political change we desperately need.

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We even criticise celebrities who say they’re worried about it. When David Attenborough appears on TV literally warning that “the collapse of civilisation is on the horizon”, Twitter is flooded with people saying how much they love him – but there’s less focus on his message, which seem to go in one ear and out the other.

I’m certainly not defending Beckham. In my view, the criticism of him is valid – Qatar’s stance on gay and human rights is appalling – but it’s easy to focus on such an apparent expression of hypocrisy without looking at the wider problems.

I’m not perfect, and it’s true that we are all stuck in this toxic, deadly system. But we are now at a point where we have to face the fact that the entire system is killing us, be it sports organisations awarding major events to oppressive regimes or us all remaining silent as the world slips into climate breakdown.

So yes, let’s make noise about Beckham and the homophobic regime in Qatar, but let’s also take a long hard look in the mirror and join the demands for major systemic change – before time is called on all of us.

Matthew Todd is the author of ‘Straight Jacket’ and ‘Pride’ and is a former editor of Attitude magazine