Florida man thrown out of rec basketball
game for being HIV-positive

A playoff game in the city of Kissimmee-sponsored basketball league was
abruptly stopped in the second half and Dakota Basinger, 21, was pulled aside by a city employee
and kicked off the court. The aspiring rapper was only diagnosed last week.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/florida-man-thrown-rec-basketball-game-hiv-positive-article-1.1757769#ixzz2z5Rvyani

A 21-year-old Florida man was tossed from a Kissimmee rec basketball game after a city employee learned the aspiring rapper is HIV-positive.

The game Sunday was in the second half when a referee blew the whistle and called a timeout, Dakota Basinger told the Orlando Sentinel.

A city employee pulled the man aside and asked Basinger, who had written about his diagnosis a week ago on Facebook, if he had HIV.

Basinger said yes.

The employee then threw the man out of the game and said he could no longer participate in the city-sponsored league, which was currently in the playoffs.

"I feel humiliated and discriminated against," Basinger told the Sentinel. "I felt horrible walking out of that gym."

The man’s mother, Lisa Basinger, was at the gym watching the game and was there when the league banned the gay player from the league.

"I couldn't believe it," she told the newspaper. "I explained to them that they needed to educate themselves on HIV and that you cannot transmit HIV through spit or casual contact."

The city backtracked Tuesday, telling the Sentinel in a statement the part-time city employee, who remains an employee “as of now,” “acted independently and without supervisor approval” when he tossed Basinger.

Basinger got the viral infection, an incurable precursor to AIDS, by having unprotected sex with another man, he told the Sentinel.

But since that time, much research has come out and eased the common fears people had about contracting HIV through non-sexual contact.

“You can't catch HIV by playing ball. It's not contagious that way,” Basinger’s teammate Gustavo Delamaza, who said the diagnosis didn’t bother him, told the Sentinel.

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