Veteran NBA referee Violet Palmer formally announced that she is gay, saying that she will be marrying her longtime partner on Friday, according to Dan Gelston of the Associated Press.
NBA referee Violet Palmer announces she is gay
Palmer, who was also the first female NBA referee when she started in 1997, will marry her longtime partner on Friday.
Scott Halleran
Palmer, who became the first female referee in the NBA in 1997, came out to fellow officials in 2007. Since then, she has been open about her sexual orientation with people around the league, but she never wanted to publicly come out because she didn’t want it to overshadow her work:
“I always wanted people to just look at my work,” she said in a phone interview. “Not look at my personal life, not look at my sexual preference. That doesn’t matter. I just wanted people to say, ‘Wow, she is a pretty damn good referee.’”
But now that Palmer is tying the knot, she’s ready for the world to know the truth about her personal life. Palmer’s partner is celebrity hair stylist Tanya Stine and the two have been together for 20 years. They currently live in Los Angeles and have been raising Stine’s three daughters from a previous marriage.
Palmer is the second active NBA participant to make such an announcement, joining Brooklyn Nets center Jason Collins, who came out in an essay in Sports Illustrated in 2013. Collins was signed by the Nets in February.
See More:
