Maldonado wants to make sure no other teen endures the harassment he received after coming out,[3] saying in a Facebook post, “To the kid who isn’t out and who is reading this ... it’s going to get better.
You don’t know what they might already be facing.” [4] Maldonado's coming out occurred at a high school basketball game in Lexington, Kentucky, on December 28, 2014.
When they made it on the bus, the Bryan Station students began banging on the nearest window, shouting gay slurs at the team.
[6][8] The Fayette County Public Schools administration's investigation concluded that the event "was inaccurately reported and mischaracterized" by the media.
[9] After coming out, Maldonado's picture was left out of the two-page spread commemorating his basketball team in his senior yearbook.
[3] Maldonado has a fragrance released by Xyrena called Formula 3, sales of which will support the LGBT sports organization "You Can Play".
[10] Maldonado was invited to speak at The Atlantic's inaugural LGBT summit in Washington D.C. in December 2015, aiming to "convene wide-ranging conversations on queer identity in America, at the end of a game-changing year in arenas from politics to pop culture".