The 27-year-old and five-time British champion trampoline gymnast publicly came out with a strong message for the homophobes.
Luke has given the UK so many satisfactions with his sport titles, and in an interview with the BBC Sounds LGBT Sport Podcast, he gave the LGBT+ population even more satisfactions and explained that while this is the first time he has spoken publicly about his sexuality, his close friends and family have known for a while.
He said: “I’ve never hidden anything and I’m really open about the fact that I’m attracted to both sexes, male and female, but I’ve never been in a relationship with either of them so I don’t know.”
“I think like most people in the LGBT+ community, growing up is always a little bit difficult. Especially wearing a leotard, doing gymnastics, doing the splits – you get the typical ‘you’re a fairy’ and the gay jokes and ‘gymnastics is a girls’ sport’. I had that growing up in school and then especially in high school it got a lot worse. There was a period of time in Year 8 and 9 where the bullying was kind of bad. I wouldn’t really talk about trampolining because I was embarrassed”, he also said during the interview.
Luke added that the bullying improved once his classmates saw him trampolining and began to “respect” the sport more: “On social media, you get your trolls every now and again, with homophobic abuse on comments or personal messages sometimes. But I honestly don’t even think about that ever. It doesn’t bother me: I feel sorry for people like that who are close-minded and still think it’s offensive to be called gay — because it’s not.”
Bravo Luke!
