Jason Ball (born 16 January 1988) is an Australian LGBTI and mental health advocate and former political candidate. In 2012, he came out as gay, and launched a campaign to tackle homophobia in Australian rules football. He stood for the Australian Greens as a candidate in the House of Representatives seat of Higgins at the 2016 Federal election and 2019 Federal election. In 2017 he was named the Young Australian of the Year for Victoria.
Background and early life
Ball attended high school at Yarra Valley Grammar and completed a Bachelor of Arts at the University of Melbourne in 2010. He played for the Yarra Glen Football Club in the Yarra Valley Mountain District Football League until taking time off in 2015 due to injury.
Ball credits his rural upbringing for fostering an interest in protecting the environment, and a high school exchange to Kansas for awakening an interest in critical thinking, philosophy and secularism.
Activism
AFL anti-homophobia campaign
Ball started a petition on change.org on 9 September 2012 that called on the Australian Football League (AFL) to play "No To Homophobia" television commercials on the big screen of the 2012 AFL Grand Final and also commit to a Pride Round.
The petition received over 29,000 signatures and gained national and international media coverage. The AFL agreed to screen the No to Homophobia TVCs during the preliminary finals that year.
Ball was invited to lead the 18th Pride March Victoria alongside his teammates from the Yarra Glen Football Club. They were also joined by AFL footballers Brock McLean and Daniel Jackson, marking the first time AFL players had been formally involved in the event.
In 2013, Ball partnered with the AFL Players Association to launch a social media campaign tackling homophobic language in sport, featuring some of the AFL's biggest names, including Jobe Watson, Scott Pendlebury and Andrew Swallow.
Pride Cup / Pride Game
On 3 May 2014, Ball's team Yarra Glen hosted the inaugural Pride Cup, which saw the 50 metre lines at each end of the oval painted in rainbow colours. The AFL supported the event by hosting a pre-match function, and General Manager of Football Operations Mark Evans announced that the AFL would support a national Pride Cup, and that it was up to clubs to show interest.
As part of the 2015 Pride Cup, an education program was developed to help players and coaches challenge homophobia in sport. The organisers behind the 2015 Cup were awarded a VicHealth Award for building health through sport on 1 December 2015.
In August 2015 St Kilda Football Club CEO Matt Finnis announced that the club would lobby the AFL for a Pride Game for the 2016 fixture, inspired by Yarra Glen's Pride Cup. It was confirmed in October 2015 that the first AFL Pride Game will be contested between St Kilda and Sydney in round 21 of the 2016 season.
Mental health and LGBTI inclusion
In 2013, Ball became an ambassador for beyondblue, the Australian national mental health initiative. In this role he has spoken to schools, sporting clubs and workplaces across the country.
From 2014 to 2015, Ball was an ambassador for Safe Schools Coalition Australia, an organisation which aims to make schools safer and more inclusive for LGBTI students.
Ball worked as a Government Liaison and Project Officer for the Young and Well Cooperative Research Centre from 2014 to 2015, a non-profit organisation that explores the role of technology in improving the mental health of young people.
Secularism
Ball was an organiser and spokesperson for the 2010 and 2012 Global Atheist Conventions held in Melbourne, Victoria. He presented at the 2012 convention with a talk titled A Fresh Generation of Freethinkers is Among Us. He was also the co-founder and President of the Freethought Student Alliance, a coalition of Australian atheist, secular, humanist and skeptic campus groups.
Awards
Ball was included in The Age Top 100 most influential Melburnians of 2012 and was amongst The Advocate's Top 25 Most Notable Comings Out of 2012.
He was named LGBTI Sports Person of the Year at the second annual GLOBE Community Awards in 2015. The awards recognise outstanding contributions and achievements in the LGBTI community in Victoria. He was also a finalist for LGBTI Person of the Year at the same event.
Pop culture and news website Junkee included Ball in "The Disruptors", their list of thirty people "changing the game for young Australia". Other disruptors included Waleed Aly, Adam Goodes and Marita Cheng. Ball was also featured in Executive Style magazine's list of "The 10 men who mattered in Australia in 2015".