Matthew Mitcham

"When I was about eight or nine, I knew I liked boys. But I soon came to the understanding that gay was not as good as straight. That it would be better to be straight and that people didn't like gays because they can't marry and had to be secretive. Nobody told me directly, but these were messages I got from society."

"Sport, in general, tends to be a good decade behind the rest of society in terms of talking about these issues. There's been a lot of progress. There's women's equality in sport, talking about depression in sport, homophobia in sport, and drugs in sport. I actually think when gay marriage is legalised, and it becomes such a non-issue in wider society, it will likewise become a non-issue in sport."

"You find that in countries where gay marriage is legalised, there's a lot less homophobic violence. It's because it's normalised. Once it's legalised it does become a lot less of an issue. And it really is such a normal thing; look at how fucking many of us there are! Society is always going to be heteronormative, there's nothing we can do about that. But if society stops demonising homosexuality and condemning it, then kids will stop absorbing messages which say who they are is wrong."