This week Tom Daley uploaded a touching video to YouTube. He spoke with a slight tremble about just finishing his A levels, losing his father and winning an Olympic medal.
What he said next was seriously impressive: ‘come spring this year my life changed, massively … I met someone … that someone is a guy’. The pause said it all – he knew this was a big moment.
It’s a sign of how far we have come as a country that a 19-year-old, bravely, can express who he loves to the nation. I believe this is one of the greatest legacies of the last Labour government, which did so much for LGBT rights by leading on legislation that has created the space for society to change.
Support for Tom Daley has been overwhelmingly positive, with figures such as Gary Lineker, Lady GaGa and Stephen Fry showing support on Twitter. Then the slurs came forward: ‘fag’ ‘queer’ and the downright uninventive ‘Tom Gayley’.
Tom’s video has exposed some uncomfortable truths.
First, homophobic language is still a huge issue in Britain today. According to a report produced by Stonewall, 99 per cent of young LGB people hear it in school. Sadly, 41 per cent of that group who are bullied contemplate or attempt suicide. The fact is that if you are famous or not, you are still likely to be on the blunt end of bigotry – nohomophobes.com shows that faggot was used over 21 million times on twitter since July 2012. Stonewall’s great new campaign is a step in the right direction, challenging it in schools. I think we can do better than the current state of affairs with proper and compulsory training of teaching staff on equality issues, as a basic start, so they can confidently challenge it.
Second, Tom Daley’s video has also exposed a shocking lack of understanding about bisexual people. Many have simply ignored that he clearly stated he still likes women. This is something that people of a range of sexualities are guilty of; they either do not like or cannot understand that someone can be into men and women. He may or may not decide he is gay in a few years – but that’s for him to decide, not us. That said, we also need to understand that some people do not feel the need to label themselves as a particular sexuality and Tom is not alone in this – Frank Ocean and Josh Hutcherson have expressed a similar sentiment.
Finally, Tom now joins the ranks of just 23 openly gay athletes out of over 12,000 at the 2012 Olympics games. In football there are no professional openly LGBT players in the UK. Boxing and cricket have one each, in the whole world, and the NFL has a sum total of zero. There clearly is a fear of what coming out can do to a sports career, and without role models who break the chain, the cycle will continue. We need real progress for athletes, and I hope we can do something in the next Labour government to afford these people protection and change attitudes. For example one way of stopping fan abuse could be to make homophobic language on par with racist language, and enforce it as such. Another could be imposing hefty fines on sponsors who alter or revoke contracts if an athlete comes out. They need to know we are serious about helping them.
Thirty-five years ago Harvey Milk said ‘You’ve gotta give them hope’. Tom Daley will have just done exactly that for those still figuring out who they are. Equal marriage passed this year, but we cannot drop the ball – the battle is far from over.
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Jay Asher is a Progress member. He tweets @JayAsher3
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