When James Corden heard that a high school had left out a picture of a gay athlete on the basketball team, he decided to address the issue on The Late Late Show.
In Kentucky, a high school called Betsey Lane dedicates two pages where every senior on the boy’s basketball team gets a picture. Yet this year, one photo was missing and that was their starting point guard Dalton Maldonado.
Maldonado had come out as gay to his team a couple of months earlier. Even though his team supported him, he was still bullied.
E! Online reports that Maldonado’s sexuality was not welcomed by the school. Students would prank call him and call him hurtful names. Maldonado even contemplated suicide.
“A kid tried to humiliate me by calling me a f***t in front of my entire fan base and team at a basketball tournament,” recalls Maldonado.
Corden was disturbed by how this kid was treated, so he ridiculed the school for being so narrow-minded. “That’s right! He’s a gay basketball player—or as I like to call him, a basketball player,” quips the host.
Although Corden made several other jokes, he sincerely hopes that the school simply made a mistake. “That’s a pretty big oversight! He’s the starting point guard! That’s like not putting Tom Cruise on the poster for Mission Impossible!”
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