After Being Called ‘Faggot’ NBA Ref Comes Out To ‘Send A Message’ To Young Athletes

An NBA referee is being called a “hero” after being called a “faggot” by a player on the court. And he’s doing it to send a strong message to young athletes.

Bill Kennedy is an NBA referee. On December 3 he issued a technical foul to Sacramento Kings point guard Rajon Rondo. After Boston Celtics’ player Isaiah Thomas “shot the free throw, Rondo walked over to Kennedy and kept talking to him. Kennedy gave him a second technical foul and ejected him from the game,” Deadspin reports today.

And that’s when “Rondo called Kennedy a faggot, and multiple people on the court heard the slurs.”

Those slurs, specifically, according to Yahoo Sports, were:

“You’re a mother———- faggot. … You’re a f——— faggot, Billy.”

Rondo also, according to the report, “aggressively pursued” Kennedy.

Here’s the video. Kennedy is #55.

Now, Bill Kennedy is making an important statement.

“I am proud to be an NBA referee and I am proud to be a gay man,” Kennedy told Yahoo Sports’ Adrian Wojnarowski. 

“I am following in the footsteps of others who have self-identified in the hopes that will send a message to young men and women in sports that you must allow no one to make you feel ashamed of who you are,” Kennedy said.

This is the most important issue when public figures come out.

In America today, so many people, especially, believe it or not, LGBT people, think coming out is not a big deal, it should not be reported on, and even, “who cares?” is tossed around, a lot – and by LGBT people sometimes, stunningly.

But Kennedy knows better, and, I suspect, most LGBT people do too.

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We know all too well that 40 percent of homeless children and teens are LGBT – often because their parents threw them out, literally, threw them away.

We know that LGBT people in general, but LGBTQ youth and teens especially think about and even attempt suicide far more than their non-LGBTQ peers.

And we know that internalized homophobia can play a huge role in this. Even when LGBTQ youth and teens are accepted by their friends, and their family, they don’t always accept themselves. And that can be disastrous.

Mashable today, in their report on Kennedy’ statement, calls him a “hero.”

“Comments like Rondo’s show there’s still a very strong stigma around homosexuality in the professional sports world, despite pubic declarations of support from league brass and marketing campaigns,” Mashable’s Sam Laird writes.

“That’s why Kennedy’s announcement is such a big deal. He didn’t just come out — he directly and publicly rebuked the culture that discourages people like him from living freely in the first place.”

Some may scoff at the “hero” claim, but if you are doing something that saves lives, I can think of no better word.

Let’s not forget, too, that equality for LGBT people may be a making advances in America, but the entire Republican presidential field is not only opposed to same-sex marriage, many, like Marco Rubio yesterday, are promising to install anti-gay justices on the Supreme Court to overturn the marriage decision.

And in well over 70 countries, being LGBT is illegal. In several, not only is it illegal, the penalty is death.

American sports are watched in nearly every country around the globe. When a figure like a player or a referee comes out, it changes the conversation and allows tolerance to slowly move in. And that, again, can save lives.

 

Image: Screenshot via YouTube