Hamish Bidwell: Tolerance means accepting different views

Sean Keppie, Kieran Foran and Reuben Garrick model the Manly Sea Eagles pride jersey. Photo / Supplied

OPINION
When rugby league goes woke, you know the game's up.

For my sins, I have followed that code all my life.

While my teenage peers were skateboarding or surfing or taking girls to the pictures, I was at club rugby league games. Floodlit double-headers, rep games, clashes with international touring teams - I devoured them all.

Whether on my own, having been dropped off by mum, or in the company of the league writer from our local paper, there wasn't a midweek or weekend match that I missed for years.

My dad had covered rugby league for the paper and everyone who took on that round after him assumed the responsibility for driving me to games too.

It was rough and ready, on and off the paddock, complete with gangs and dogs and all sorts of sights, sounds and smells.

This was the 1980s and 90s and no one had to signal their tolerance or seek to advertise diversity. It was simply there in the wide array of people who made up the rugby league community.

Which brings me to the hysteria around a rainbow jersey.

Essentially, management of a rugby league club - without consultation with the playing staff - sought to further hijack a virtue-signalling round of football.

Sports shouldn't need a "Women in League" round, as this was in the NRL. They should respect women every week of every year, not make a tokenistic annual gesture.

But one club sought to take it a step further, by throwing its arms around the rainbow community as well.

Some Pasifika players baulked, on religious grounds, putting their own careers and the club's season at risk, by boycotting the match.

Hamish Bidwell. Photo/ Warren Buckland

Would I wear a rainbow jumper? Of course I would.

But I would be at pains to point out that it was because I wanted to. The idea that my employer was making me do it would cause me to protest in some way.

The issue here for me is that the people making the decisions at that club never for a minute stopped to wonder if their beliefs were shared by the players. They arrogantly assumed themselves to be right.

I think we see the same in our politics and in our newsrooms.

Pasifika voters have traditionally been Labour ones. But as that party goes increasingly woke, do they risk alienating those voters?

And do they even care how their actions affect or upset the God-fearing portion of their supporter base?

This rainbow-jersey situation also brought to mind the grief and anguish of journalistic colleagues when Donald Trump was elected President of the United States and Britain voted to leave the EU.

Both were very likely scenarios and yet absolutely blindsided the people I worked with.

It was as if they couldn't conceive for a moment that someone might think differently from them.

That's what I don't get with this woke business. There's talk of tolerance and diversity, but it applies to only one point of view.

Tolerance, to me, means accepting views and beliefs that I don't share. It's not about insisting there's only one way to think or act.

If we value diversity, then surely that means we accept that people are different?

Just like they did when we stood shoulder to shoulder on sidelines in Upper Hutt, Wainuiomata, Newtown and Petone, when I was a boy.