Tom Daley Comes Out

December 2, 2013 by staff 

Tom Daley Comes Out, Well, of course, cosmically – where all the worlds are perfect – it doesn’t matter at all that Tom Daley is going out with a man. And there’s sufficient sight of that cosmic perfection on Earth these days, enough for me to be slightly irritated at being asked to write about Tom Daley’s YouTube coming-out statement. (What am I? The Telegraph gay bloke? Oh please.)

But it still matters, though, enough for Tom to record the video, enough for us to watch it (maybe), even for me to write about it. The editor caught me on the platform at New Barnet, where I was waiting to catch a train. Next to me on the bench was a young girl, holding her iPhone in front of her face, raptly following Tom’s video on YouTube. People care about Tom Daley.

So, young man: you just did a beautiful thing. I’d guess a part of your internal discourse these last few months has been thinking “What’s it got to do with anyone else?” The nasty comments from the more intelligently unpleasant members of the public will use that very trope – “I don’t care what they do, why can’t they just keep it to themselves?”, etc etc – to signal their own inadequate psychologies.

It’s not viable, though, pretending to be something you’re not – not in practice. It might just about work for a while, in theory, and particularly when you’re alone. But it’s not possible to be in love and not wish to share that fact. Indeed, it would be an obscenity to demand that harmless young people in love should keep the best thing about being alive a secret, as though they’re ashamed of being human.

It’s a touching video, starting with a memory of his father. Most of us worry about what our dads will think. Tom is confident his own would be pleased that his son is happy, and I’m sure that’s true. My own met me as I stepped from a train from Glasgow – I gave the news by phone – to reassure me that nothing of importance had changed. Nothing important, except we had stopped lying to one another. (He was right, of course. Your dad’s always right.)

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