Jason Collins was one of the many celebrity speakers during the first night of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. He came to know Hillary and Bill Clinton through their daughter, Chelsea, who attended Stanford while Collins was a basketball player for the Cardinal.
Collins announced in 2013 with a feature in Sports Illustrated that he was gay, but during his speech Monday he told a story about revealing his sexual orientation to the Clintons first.
“Before I came out to the world on the cover of Sports Illustrated, I came out privately to the Clinton family. I’ve known their family for almost 20 years. I knew that they would accept me for who I was and that they would help pave a path for others to do the same. I am forever grateful for their words of wisdom back then and their unconditional support. They knew that my sexual orientation made no difference in my ability to play basketball, just as someone’s gender makes no difference in his or her ability to lead our nation.”
That’s a pretty amazing stroke of luck, no? Imagine if Chelsea had gone to Harvard or Rutgers (the Harvard of New Jersey, as everyone calls it). He never gets to know the Clintons, never gets to be part of the DNC and deliver a pretty great speech about LGBTQ inclusion. If Collins had instead attended Trump University, none of this would have happened.
