DAN WOOTTON: How tragically woke that Tom Daley ‘feels sick to be British’ because of homophobia outside of Britain. His BBC anti-colonial propaganda piece was ill-informed – can’t he just stick to knitting?
‘It makes me feel sick to be British.’
Woke diver Tom Daley had a lightbulb moment during his BBC propaganda piece about homophobia in Commonwealth countries: It’s all Britain’s fault!
Completely ignoring the inconvenient fact that our Sexual Offences Act of 1967 legalised gay sex in England and Wales for consenting adults over the age of 21, it’s our, in Tom’s words, ‘toxic history’ that we should all feel deeply ashamed about behind Jamaica continuing to make gay relationships illegal.
He had his anti-colonial realisation, which formed the basis of an entire hour of BBC1 primetime last night, based on one conversation with a Jamaican social justice warrior.
The race and sexuality academic Carla Moore told him that sexual assaults by plantation owners on black slaves 300 years ago is the reason for homophobia in the Caribbean in 2022.
‘It’s a thing that white people do to black people to harm them – that end result is the homophobia we see today,’ she insisted.
‘You’re not in charge here anymore, you’re not the master of this country anymore.
‘We get to determine how we’re going to proceed. Unfortunately, that plays out on the body of LGBT people.’
DAN WOOTTON: Woke diver Tom Daley had a lightbulb moment during his BBC propaganda piece about homophobia in Commonwealth countries: It’s all Britain’s fault!
DAN WOOTTON: Completely ignoring the inconvenient fact that our Sexual Offences Act of 1967 legalised gay sex in England and Wales for consenting adults over the age of 21, it’s our, in Tom’s words, ‘toxic history’ that we should all feel deeply ashamed about behind Jamaica continuing to make gay relationships illegal. (Pictured: Daley knitting his own Team GB sweater during the Tokyo Olympic Games)
And in a pointed message to Tom and his licence fee-funded TV crew, she added: ‘Stop coming down here to make us feel like we’re the worst people in the world – we’ve had enough of that.’
Tom took the bait without even a hint of critical analysis, concluding ‘it’s not helpful for the people around the Commonwealth to be constantly pointed a finger at because they haven’t removed’ the anti-gay laws he is meant to be campaigning against.
Instead, of course, that finger should be pointed firmly at Britain, the nation of which he feels so ‘ashamed’, because the legacy of the Empire included anti-gay laws in post-colonial nations (many of which have since been removed, by the way).
Tom went further in the Guardian (where else?), saying of the filming process: ‘I felt so dark about my relationship with being British. I came away from it with a really twisted sense of what it meant to be British… I felt very helpless to be British.’
Good lord, man.
Being gay and British myself, I guess I’m meant to be grateful about these constant interventions from Mr Daley, who used to make happy YouTube videos of his travels to famously anti-gay countries Dubai and Abu Dhabi.
Tom Daley along with six LGBT advocates and athletes from across the Commonwealth at the opening ceremony of this year’s Commonwealth Games in Birmingham
‘The Colonial Legacy of Homophobia’: In the documentary Daley looks at Nigerian laws from 1923 with Nigerian LGBT activist Bisi Alimi
But I’d love to go just one week without hearing him preach about something he clearly knows so little about.
Like his declaration that trans people should be able to compete in all women’s sports whenever they please, for example, which would damn his female diving teammates to competitive oblivion.
Let’s be honest for one moment, the grievance industry has been very good for Tom.
Being gay and widely accepted wasn’t enough for him – the moment he burst out the closet, activism beckoned.
It’s ironic really that he’s so determined to cling onto victimhood, when his coming out story has been nothing but a great British success.
While he had totally understandable fears that he might lose sponsorship, be beaten up or see his female fanbase desert him, the opposite has proven to be true.
Does that mean homophobia doesn’t exist? Of course not. Just like Tom, I am subjected to it every day of my life on social media, but it hasn’t held me back from achieving my dreams in Britain.
In fact, Tom is now a far bigger star because of his sexuality, thanks to the tolerance of the country of which he now feels sick to be a citizen.
He’s the face of many brands, a popular presence on mainstream TV and a social media force.
Daley posing with his husband, Oscar-winning filmmaker Dustin Lance Black, after being awarded an OBE in July
How sad that by signing up to the hard left LGBT dogma he feels the need to attack Britain which has almost universally accepted him for who he is.
Let’s have a look at the facts of Tom’s claim that colonialism is responsible for modern-day homophobia in Commonwealth countries because his BBC documentary titled Illegal To Be Me certainly didn’t.
Many historians have argued that homophobia long predates the British Empire, not to mention the fact that many of the most homophobic countries in the world, including Iran and Saudi Arabia, have no history of being colonised.
In many places, an anti-gay moral code was set by centuries of religion effectively outlawing same-sex relationships.
As historian of the British Raj Dr Zareer Masani told the Daily Telegraph of Daley’s anti-British conclusion: ‘As a historian, I can assure him that male homosexuality in India carried penalties under both Hindu and Sharia Islamic law long before the British Raj – reflecting both local and prevailing Christian sentiment – enacted statutes prohibiting it.’
He added that ’75 years after the British left’ there has been virtually no change in attitude towards LGBT people in many Commonwealth countries.
DAN WOOTTON: Of course, it’s a great concern that homosexuality remains a criminal offence in 35 out of 56 Commonwealth countries. But at least 15 former colonies have decriminalised same-sex relationships, from Australia to Trinidad and Tobago to India, proving change is possible. (Pictured: Daley during his BBC programme on homophobia in the Commonwealth)
I’m not taking away from the reality that much of Tom’s documentary was harrowing.
The physical and mental torture suffered by gay folk in countries like Nigeria and Pakistan makes me feel sick to my stomach.
And, of course, it’s a great concern that homosexuality remains a criminal offence in 35 out of 56 Commonwealth countries.
But at least 15 former colonies have decriminalised same-sex relationships, from Australia to Trinidad and Tobago to India, proving change is possible.
But what hope is there of further encouragement to evolve if the conclusion is that it’s all Britain’s fault and nothing to do with the homophobic attitudes that continue to pervade those countries today?
Tom’s rainbow flag-waving virtue signalling and anti-British rhetoric will do very little to achieve change.
That has to come from within the countries themselves, not forced upon them by woke public figures who ironically take the role of modern colonisers attempting to stamp their moral code on the unenlightened world.
I deplore the regimes that continue to ban homosexuality by law, but to blame it on Britain is as ill-informed as it is naive.
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