IN TOO DEEP?
Tom Daley is an Olympian, brilliant diver, fantastic athlete, proud husband and father. He’s pretty good at knitting, too. Where he may not make quite such a splash is the past. His recent BBC documentary investigated the terrible homophobia in many of our Commonwealth countries, for which he squarely blamed the British Empire.
Um, no. Male homosexuality in India carried penalties under both Hindu and Sharia Islamic law, long before the British Raj.
Today, 32 of Africa’s 54 countries criminalise same-sex relationships. In places such as Mauritania and parts of Nigeria and Somalia, these harmless activities between consenting adults carry the death penalty.
Of those three countries, only Nigeria was fully a British territory, and Mauritania never was at all.
So while Tom, 28, is right to fight for an end to the persecution of gay men, it would help if he got the facts right. Brilliant on a diving platform. Not so on a history one.