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Sports stars Tom Daley and Ben Cohen wear ‘gay icon’ aprons for Christmas

Dec 26 2013
Written by Aaron Day

British Olympic diving star Tom Daley and former England rugby player Ben Cohen have both appeared on social media wearing ‘gay icon’ aprons in their Christmas photos.

Tom Daley, who revealed he is in a relationship with a man earlier this month, shared photographs of his pride-themed Christmas day on Instagram yesterday.

Among pictures of rainbow-tied gifts, and pride-coloured socks, Daley also posed wearing little more than an apron with the title ‘gay icon’:

He captioned the image: “Running theme for today haha…thanks aunty Marie :P.”

In a five-minute YouTube video, the British diving bronze medallist, and star of ITV’s Splash, revealed that he had been in a relationship with a man since Spring 2013. Notably, he specifically chose not to use a label to describe his sexuality, but said it was “love at first sight”, when he met his boyfriend.

Also donning the same apron for Christmas dinner was Rugby star Ben Cohen, who is an outspoken straight ally for LGBT rights.

He posted the image onto Twitter yesterday with the caption: “Wearing my apron with Pride whilst cooking Christmas dinner!”

The 35-year-old founded the Ben Cohen StandUp Foundation in 2011 to fight homophobic bullying.

Earlier this year he attended National Student Pride 2013 to speak out on homophobia in football, saying: “There are many other sports which don’t have that problem. People in the Premiership don’t treat their fellow players with respect.

“There is no respect for the referee. He doesn’t have any power on the pitch and you have to talk to the top of the game to get that sorted out. Then you feed that through to the grassroots level.”