This was published 6 years ago
British diver Tom Daley issues gay rights challenge to Commonwealth nations
By Jenny Noyes
British diving champion Tom Daley has issued a challenge to the nations competing in the Commonwealth Games that still criminalise homosexuality.
After winning gold in the the men's synchronised 10-metres platform with teammate Daniel Goodfellow on Friday, Daley posted a selfie to Twitter calling on those nations to fix their record on LGBT rights.
"37 of the competing nations criminalise being LGBT+," he tweeted.
"I feel so lucky to be able to be openly who I am without worry. I hope one day every athlete from every nation in the commonwealth will be free to compete openly as who they are too!"
That number is already set to drop to 36 after a judge in Trinidad and Tobago ruled on Thursday that its ban on gay sex is unconstitutional.
Homosexual relations there has been illegal, though rarely enforced. The situation is the same in Barbados, Samoa, Botswana, Sierra Leone, Cook Islands, Singapore, Dominica, Sri Lanka, Jamaica, Tonga, Kiribati, Malawi, Tuvalu and Namibia.
In Antigua and Barbuda, Papua New Guinea, Bangladesh, Saints Kitts and Nevis, Cameroon, Saint Lucia, Ghana, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Grenada, Solomon Islands, Guyana, Swaziland, India, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Malaysia, Zambia, and Pakistan, homosexuality is punishable by imprisonment of varying sentence-lengths up to life.
And in Brunei, and parts of Nigeria where Sharia Law is enforced, it can be punishable by death.
Britain legalised same-sex marriage in 2014, except for Northern Ireland.
Australia is the most recent Commonwealth country to legalise same-sex marriage. Canada was the first, in 2005, followed by South Africa, New Zealand, Britain and Malta.
Daley, 23, married his husband Dustin Lance Black in May, and last month announced the pair are expecting their first child.