Following the recent ESPN story by John Buccigross about the coming out of Brendan Burke, the son of Brian Burke, the General Manager of the National Hockey League’s Toronto Maple Leafs, the CBC’s Mark Kelley, on his show, Connect, interviewed one of my heroes, former basketball star John Amaechi, who in his autobiography, Man in the Middle, made public his homosexuality, a first for a National Basketball Association player. You can view the whole segment at the Connect website, but I’ve transcribed one of my favourite parts below.

Mark Kelley: …we are very forgiving of athletes when it comes to whether they’ve been busted for drugs, or whether they’ve been busted for beating their wives. Take Michael Vick, he was running a dog ring, and now he’s playing for the Philadelphia Eagles again! We forgive. We think it’s okay, but when it comes to [being gay in professional sports] why do we draw the line here?

Source text:

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