Tom Daley has called for Commonwealth countries to decriminalise homosexuality after winning gold at the games.
Tom and his diving partner Dan Goodfellow won the synchronised 10m platform competition at the Gold Coast tournament, and in the wake of the victory, Tom took the chance to highlight the “37 of the competing nations criminalise being LGBT+”.
“I feel so lucky to be able to be openly who I am without worry,” he wrote on Twitter. “I hope one day every athlete from every nation in the commonwealth will be free to compete openly as who they are too.”
The diver, who married his partner Dustin Lance Black in May last year, also discussed the issue on Friday’s (13 April) edition of BBC 5 Live Breakfast.
“I feel truly lucky to be able to complete openly as who I am, without having to worry about any ramifications,” he said. “For those 37 countries… I can’t even imagine what it would be like growing up knowing that you’re not on an equal playing field and are going to be judged for who you are.
“We need to talk about it, these issues need to be raised and sorted out.
“We need progress, even before Birmingham the next Commonwealth games, if we can get one country to decriminalise homosexuality then we’re moving in the right direction.”
Commonwealth countries where homosexuality is illegal but not enforced:
- Barbados
- Botswana
- Cook Islands
- Dominica
- Jamaica
- Kiribati
- Malawi
- Namibia
- Samoa
- Sierra Leone
- Singapore
- Sri Lanka
- Tonga
- Trinidad and Tobago
- Tuvalu
Where it is punished by imprisonment:
- Bangladesh
- Cameroon
- Ghana
- Grenada
- Guyana
- India
- Kenya
- Malaysia
- Pakistan
- Papua New Guinea
- Saints Kitts and Nevis
- Saint Lucia
- Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
- Solomon Islands
- Swaziland
- Tanzania
- Uganda
- Zambia
In Brunei it is punishable with the death penalty.
On Valentine’s Day, Tom and Dustin revealed that they will be becoming parents later this year.
The couple later discussed their deliberation over how to start a family, explaining their decision to opt for surrogacy over adoption.
“Both of us have lost our family members, parents at an early age,” Dustin said on Fearne Cotton’s ’Happy Place’ podcast. “There was something for both of us where we felt deeply that we’d like to complete that connection first when creating our family, and to have a biological connection to our past, to bring that into our present and let that grow into the future. At least at first, for the first couple!”
“We’ve always said we’d be very open and honest with our child,” Tom added. “I’ve been writing down a diary of every single step that we’ve gone through so we can explain it to our child.”