Tom Daley calls for unity within the LGBTQ+ community: “Everybody has to work as one”
Tom Daley has stressed the importance of “every single person” within the LGBTQ+ community working together to combat hate, discrimination and violence.
As he accepted his award for Changemaker – presented by Meta Quest – at the sixth annual GAY TIMES Honours ceremony (25 November), the Olympic diver hit out at the Qatar World Cup as he delivered a powerful speech about unity and LGBTQ+ visibility. “I am really, really sorry to announce that the first team to leave the World Cup is Qatar.
Qatar is out of the World Cup,” he started, to cheers from the audience. “But as you all know, and what has been very clear recently, is that it is deadly to be LGBTQIA+ around the world or an ally from the events that have taken place so far this year and in the years’ past.
Visibility equals freedom. When people start to take away our visibility, we start to take away our freedoms.” Before acknowledging his privilege as a “little white gay man that dives and occasionally knits”, Tom called for all sporting events around the world to have a “pro-LGBTQIA+ stance at the centre of their ethos”. “It is imperative that every single person in here – like it was said before – every middle class, white gay cis man, stands up for the visibility of every single person in this community because the things that are being said by our politicians, about dampening down and compromising who we are every single day, is not okay,” he continued. “Every time they say that, it is taking away our visibility and every time we take away our visibility, it takes away our freedom.
