Highlights: Rainbow-colored Pride Tape has been part of pro ice hockey for seven years, symbolizing the sport’s pledge to be welcoming and inclusive. But the NHL has banned the athletic tape, quickly sparking a backlash.

“I’ll use the tape — if I have to buy it myself, I will,” Philadelphia Flyers forward Scott Laughton said on Wednesday, discussing how he would mark his team’s Pride Night.

The NHL announced over the summer that its players will no longer wear special jerseys during warmups to mark “theme nights,” when teams show support for a variety of groups, from the LGBTQ+ community to Indigenous groups, the military, and people fighting cancer. But as the NHL prepared to start a new season, it sent a memo announcing the ban also applies to Pride Tape.

The abrupt shift came after several NHL players made headlines last season for refusing to wear Pride Night themed jerseys, citing religious or other reasons.

The multicolored Pride Tape quickly became an “ingrained part of hockey culture” — and that quote comes from the NHL’s own website, in a story from 2021.

Pride Tape was backed by a Kickstarter campaign in 2015, as a simple way to encourage LGBTQ+ youth to get involved in team sports.

  • @Cold_Brew_Enema
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    69 months ago

    The churches are ok with it? I thought religion dictates that if you are gay you will burn in hell for eternity?

    • Mossy Feathers (They/Them)
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      9 months ago

      Only the ones that like to ignore the bit about “Jesus Saves”; which nowadays is a lot of them.

      Edit: the sane churches are the ones that say, “god gave us a brain, that means he wants us to use it”; the ones that show up on the news all the time are the ones that say, “god gave us a brain so Satan could tempt us.”

    • @[email protected]
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      139 months ago

      I don’t go to church alot, but when I do i attend an Episcopal church with two reverends, one gay, one a woman. They sell shirts in the gift shop that say things like “I’m Episcopalian because it’s okay to believe in dinosaurs”.

    • @kbotc
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      39 months ago

      Several Anglican churches are Catholics with gays and women leaders.