Rugby star Gareth Thomas has spoken out about the response he received after coming out as gay more than a decade ago, and after revealing his HIV-positive status, saying the positive response from others came as a 'great sign' not just for himself, but also for others.
Thomas, 47, came out in December 2009, becoming the first professional rugby union player to do so - going on to win Stonewall's Hero of the Year award, among other accolades.
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Thomas explained how he initially wanted to stay away from the reaction online, thinking the worst, but was surprised to find his news was 'celebrated in such a positive way'.
Speaking to LADbible, he said: "I didn't create an expectation of what was going to happen. I just literally went into it without having a clue of what could happen.
"I kind of kept myself away from what was happening I kept myself away from the reaction because I wanted to keep myself to what was important to me and that was the game, that was my teammates.
"What I didn't want - and I realised this from having the team - is that I didn't want discrimination of who I was, and I didn't want a celebration of who I was. I just wanted life to be the same, I wanted equality, I wanted the same as everybody else."
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Thomas continued: "I wasn't doing it for that, I just was doing it to be treated like everybody else.
"So the fact it was celebrated in such a positive way was, to me, a great sign for everyone else. A great sign maybe for the kid who's lying in bed thinking, 'Do you know what, I'd love to play rugby but I can't', or the guy who's feeling like, 'I'm going to work on a construction site but I can't because I can't be authentic about who I am'.
"[...] It was important for them to see the support for them to see them waves."
Thomas said in the wake of him coming out, he received comments and messages of support from strangers on social media, including from people who told him they felt inspired by his bravery.
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"I still do," he added.
"I didn't do it to be a trailblazer or a hero - I didn't do it for any of those reasons, I did it for my own reasons.
"But to realise that you can make a difference to people's lives by being authentic is a really powerful thing to be able to say that you've done."
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Thomas said he once even received a letter from an elderly gay man who lived in Biarritz in France, who had never felt able to come out.
He said: "He was a 70-year-old man, was married to the love of his life - a woman. She passed away, she knew of his sexuality, but she loved him, and he loved her.
"And he said, 'We lived at a time when I could never be myself.'
"And he said, 'I'll never ever be authentic, because I'm too old to go down now.'
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"But he wrote me a letter just to say thank you for doing what I did to help other people growing up now."
It's a letter that he still has today, stored safely in a cabinet of all his sporting memorabilia and achievements at his mother's house.
"That's one of the most poignant ones," Thomas said of the messages he's been sent.
In 2019, the former Welsh rugby union player also went public about being HIV-positive with an 'undetectable' status, something that means the disease cannot be passed on.
"Having the positive HIV test really rocked me," he said.
"And it kind of sent me back to the days about the turmoil with my sexuality and thinking, 'This is another thing that I have to harbour now, this is another thing that I can't tell people about'.
"And I realised that when you don't tell people about certain things, as much as that makes you feel safe, it actually highlights the stigma around it."
He explained that stigma wasn't just a 'force' that comes from other people, saying he also feels there's a 'version of self stigma as well' - a sense that only grew when he tried to keep the news private, but was blackmailed by a 'close friend'.
"It added another layer to stigma," Thomas said.
"Because it's like, 'Well, it must be bad because if you're blackmailing me over it, then it must be something that's really bad'."
Eventually, Thomas decided to regain control of the narrative, choosing to tell the story in his own 'positive' way, to 'educate people'.
In turn, he was met with another outpouring of love from the general public.
He said: "Do you know what I thought was so special about it? There was a lot of people - like, a lot of messages - but there was a huge amount of support from people with platforms."
Thomas said that the encouragement from high profile faces was hugely important for people struggling with their diagnosis to see, saying that the wave of positive online noise after his announcement helped build a 'sense of connection' among 'a community that has been shunned, hidden in the dark, been very secretive for so, so many years'.
He continued: "I don't use social media that much, but I know - as much as social media has had a bashing - that day, literally, social media was a place where so many people went to, to feel a sense of belonging, to feel a sense of support.
"And it was it was really, really powerful to hear stories from people - who, just from [somebody else's] comment to me, gave them the strength to be able to open up and not have to lie about their status of living with HIV anymore."
Thomas added: "So as much as they supported me, I realised that the bigger picture that day [was that it] supported millions and millions of people who were struggling with their diagnosis."
Featured Image Credit: Alamy
Topics: SPORT, Celebrity, LGBT, Community