NBA Hall of Famer Dennis Rodman thinks 10-20 percent of all professional athletes are gay. And he says more gay athletes should come out.
Currently, there are no out athletes in any of the four major American sports. Some athletes have come out after leaving professional sports.
“I don’t know why people haven’t came out before,” Rodman told Business Insider.” “It’s cool that people are coming out being, you know, gay or homosexual or whatever, lesbian and stuff like that.”
Rodman has been a press tour to promote ESPN’s new “30-for-30” documentary, “Rodman: For Better or Worse,” during which a portion focuses on Rodman’s relationship with the LGBTQ communities.
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Rodman has often spoken publicly about “partying at gay clubs, dressing in drag, and having sexual fantasies about men, though he denied being gay. The documentary depicts Rodman as being embraced by LGBTQ people after a 1995 Sports Illustrated article revealed Rodman’s thoughts on sexuality,” Business Insider reported. For the cover photo, Rodman posed in lingerie.
“They didn’t know the fact that when [they] shot that cover for the Sports Illustrated that that was the best-selling Sports Illustrated ever,” Rodman said. “And then the gay community started to reach out to me and said, ‘Wow, we never knew that our community can be represented like that in sports.’ And people didn’t know at the time that I was doing that.
“I was, you know, doing all the drag clubs, I was dressing in drag. I was dressing in women’s clothes, I was doing lingerie and stuff like that and people in the gay community started embracing me,” he continued. ” If you’re gay, I didn’t give a damn.”
As far as the number of professional athletes who are gay, Rodman speculated that “if 10 percent or 20 percent of people in the NBA, or any sports, [are] gay. I wouldn’t be surprised. It wouldn’t shock me at all. I think today, it wouldn’t shock anyone. I think that’d be more acceptable now than anything.”
