A ‘pride match’ between Iran and Egypt — and Washington state’s gay leaders couldn’t be happier about it

SEATTLE — On Thursday, the Washington state House speaker and its Senate president — likely the country’s first-ever pairing of openly gay state capital legislative leaders — met to strategize with progressive campaigners against a pair of conservative-backed ballot initiatives that would impose new rules on transgender children in schools and sports. To defeat the measures, the campaign will have to convince voters beyond Seattle’s progressive enclaves to accept their arguments about privacy, liberty and acceptance. But on Friday, Washington’s LGBTQ+ leaders were thinking about how they might address an even more hard-to-reach constituency: citizens of Egypt and Iran, whose governments criminalize homosexuality but have seen their national teams paired through a scheduling quirk in the World Cup’s only official “Pride Match.” Members of Seattle’s World Cup organizing committee set out to make the June 26 game a showcase of the city’s inclusivity before a random draw ensured two of the world’s most repressive states toward sexual minorities would take the field. While FIFA has banned critics of the regime in Tehran from flying the country’s prerevolutionary flag (under rules prohibiting the display of political symbols), soccer’s governing body has said it will permit rainbow flags over objections from Iranian and Egyptian soccer officials. “How many opportunities do you have to get positive messages about happy queer people beamed into Iran and Egypt?” said state Senate President Jamie Pedersen. “I don’t think there’s going to be any way for people who are watching the game and seeing images of the stands to be able to avoid the fact that there’s going to be a huge contingent of rainbow flags waving.” Pedersen and state House Speaker Laurie Jinkins have known each other since the 1990s, when they first worked together on a failed campaign to pass a statewide nondiscrimination law. Both were subsequently elected to the legislature — she from Tacoma, he from a Seattl