Hockey

You're probably not wrong.

When I was in grad school, we had a "graduate student association", which was basically a student union. People would come to us with proposals to allocate $1000 to various causes. We would always vote them down. Not because we didn't support the causes (most of us did -- grad students notoriously lean left haha), but because we drew our fees from all the grad students at the university with no way for them to opt out of the collection of those fees. Basically, we were in a position where we could forcibly collect money from students and assign them at will. It would have been a terrible precedent to abuse that power, as it was a surefire way to cause the grad students to revolt against the mandatory fees. So we had to say no. And every time we said no, there was outrage -- the campus newspaper would make us out to be heartless power hungry monsters or whatever.

I think, in the end, this is a somewhat similar situation. If things are mandatory, you have to include all causes. And inevitably some players will protest and opt out. And the outrage news story will happen every time. You're right that, in the end, this may end up being better. You'll have individual players still supporting causes, and becoming mouthpieces for the change they want to see, without forced organizational participation.

At the Winnipeg Pride rally, a few weeks ago, someone was holding a sign: "If you're here because you were forced to be, you are part of the problem."