British Olympic diver Tom Daley and his husband, American screenwriter Dustin Lance Black, announced that they are the fathers of a baby boy, Robert Ray, born through surrogacy.
The baby was born Wednesday and the couple announced the news over the weekend. The couple were married in 2017. The name Robert carries special significance for Daley, being the name of his late father, who died of cancer in 2011.
Daley, 24, announced in 2013 that he was in a relationship with a man and later said he was gay. He won bronze medals at the Olympics in 2012 and 2016, along with two individual golds in the 10-meter platform at the world championships in 2009 and 2017. Black, 44, won an Oscar for his screenplay for the movie “Milk.”
Earlier this year, Daley told the Times of London that the men had no idea who the biological father would be. “We found an egg donor and we are the sperm donors, we have fertilized half the eggs each,” he said. “We put in a boy embryo and a girl embryo and we don’t know whose is whose.”
The announcement shows again the mainstreaming of same-sex relationships, accelerated by legalized marriage. This kind of announcement is routine among athletes with opposite-sex partners and it will become more common as more LGBT athletes come out.
