After Being Ejected Rajon Rondo Used Anti-Gay Slurs Towards A Referee That Is Now Coming Out As Homosexual

Yahoo- Bill Kennedy, one of the NBA's top referees, has revealed he is gay.

"I am proud to be an NBA referee and I am proud to be a gay man," Kennedy told Yahoo Sports on Sunday night. "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's announcement comes in the wake of the NBA's suspension of Sacramento Kings guard Rajon Rondo, who game officials, including Kennedy, heard unleash a disturbing torrent of anti-gay slurs following his ejection from a game on Dec. 3 in Mexico City.

After Kennedy, 49, ejected Rondo with consecutive technical fouls in a Kings loss to the Boston Celtics, Rondo defied league protocol to immediately leave the court and began stalking Kennedy, who had retreated to a far sideline of the floor.

In the game officials’ report used as part of the NBA's investigation – which includes details provided to Yahoo Sports from National Basketball Referee's Association general counsel Lee Seham – Kennedy and fellow referee Ben Taylor described Rondo's post-ejection diatribe as including the statements: "You're a mother------- faggot. … You're a f------ faggot, Billy."



​First and foremost, congratulations to Billy Kennedy for coming out of the closet, and finally feeling safe enough to stop living a lie while working in a very hetero-dominant atmosphere. That is truly the most important aspect of this story. Every homosexual that feels comfortable enough to identify himself (or herself) as one is a small win for a society that is only becoming more and more progressive. The fact that there isn't enough material to make his announcement, in itself, a worthwhile blog is a good sign of how far we have come.

With that said, I am going to need one question answered before I go about dragging Rajon Rondo's name through the mud. Are we to believe that he knew that Billy Kennedy was gay before verbally assaulting him with a host of anti-homosexual epithets? That makes a HUGE difference. I don't know much about Billy Kennedy. Does he talk with an exaggerated lisp? Does he dramatize his mannerisms?  Does he show up to the arena in a feather boa? Were there any hints that Rajon Rondo could have possibly picked up on to make his host of insults intentionally personalized? I get that it is 2015 and the 'F word' is rapidly approaching the same level of offensiveness as the 'N word', but it's not exactly there yet. It's definitely not right for Rajon Rondo to be using that word in any context, but it's ways more wrong for him to be using it on purpose. 

I remember a couple years back I was playing in a hockey game, and a white player on the opposition dropped a HARD 'N bomb' on another white player on my team. The white official promptly threw him out of the game and I remember, in the moment, thinking that that was an overreaction. Isn't the most disrespectful thing about racial, or sexual, slurs that they are meant to intentionally disparage a person of that specific demographic? I know times have changed, but if calling a straight person a 'faggot' was a crime at the turn of the century then I would have been booted out of school faster than my middle school music teacher that was hooking up with my twin classmates. I'm not saying that I am giving Rajon Rondo the benefit of the doubt, but I am saying that it's not outside the realm of possibility that he deserves it. Either way, I have no problem with the suspension he received, but this could be the worst possible case of a "your mom" joke being punctuated with a "my mother's dead". 


P.S. If we are being honest, throwing a guy out of a game for staring you down is kind of...well...it starts with a 'G' and rhymes with "haaaaayyyyyyy!"...