Veteran NBA referee Violet Palmer, who was the first female official in the "big four" professional sports, talks about her sexuality and her partner of 12 years in the July 17 Advocate (scroll to bottom).

Odd that it's not a full-fledged, big deal interview... I mean, she's the first ref in the majors to come out while active, right?

She's only a referee, not a player. Still, good for her.

I actually am a bit disappointed by Joe's comment. If we consider any sport, it is made up of a number of different participants, each of which is essential for the sport to be played. Officiating is an integral part of any sport. Let me ask a somewhat different question. Do you think the NBA would survive if players needed to work on the honesty system and call their own fouls?

Officials, especially elite level officials need to work hard at their fitness and readiness for a game. Unlike players who have dedicated coaching and training sessions however, officials must do this in isolation normally. Also, officials typically have or still do play the game they officiate. It allows them to keep in touch with the empathy of players.

For a "normal" official in an elite league, they need to arrive at the venue at least 1 hour prior to the game, perform all the pre-game duties required of the game, perform a pre-game conference with their crew, perform the game (without substitution), perform self-evaluation after the game and sometimes review video of the game. This can take anywhere from 4-6 hours. Add any travel time and all of a sudden, it becomes a serious effort. All this in an environment where regrdless of what call you make, somebody will disagree with you.

In Australia, we have commenced a big campaign to ensure that the role of the official is recognised by all. Our codes of conduct are specifically targetted to ensure that everybody involved with the game enjoys themselves and a new innovation is to have our younger officials to wear green shirts - signifying that people should show green (or good) behaviours when dealing with officials. And we are insisting that for all junior games, the teams must shake hands with the officials after the game, regardless of result.

I am not suggesting that officials are more important than players, but I would suggest that maybe players should think about what it really takes to be an official.

I don't think Joe was discrediting officials. Rather, his point is that we're getting these peripheral people (retirees, refs, front office people) coming out. And let's be honest, this would have been a much bigger story if it was a male ref. But the real story won't be until an actual current player comes out.

Kudos to Violet and best of luck to her, but in all probability most people probably suspected she was gay already. So as a news story, it's kind of on par with the breaking news that Water is Wet, Bush is an Idiot and the Pope is Catholic.

My point was not to disparage officials, but only to reply to fenwayguy's comment that it was "odd" that it wasn't a "full-fledged, big deal interview." The fact is, the public at large doesn't know or care about or identify with game officials as they do with players.

It would've been a slightly larger story if it was a male ref coming out. It would be a much, MUCH larger story if it were a male player coming out. Even the Sheryl Swoopes story got more publicity than Violet Palmer. Why? Swoopes is a player.

Yeah...if you notice The Advocate article wasn't really a "coming out" piece, it was a collection of stories that features gays and lesbians with "Cool Jobs"..... as George mentions, most people connected with the NBA already knew about Violet and it was the casual NBA fan/viewer that this came to as "news".... for those of you interested, it's the issue of The Advocate with Homer Simpson on the cover (DUH!); actually has a couple really interesting articles including an interview with Michael Moore as well as the Simpsons piece.