News & Opinion
ESPN Fires Curt Schilling Over Transphobic Comments
Image via Wikimedia Commons
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In a brief statement yesterday, ESPN announced that analyst and former Red Sox pitcher Curt Schiling has been fired after he made some offensive comments about transgender people:
ESPN is an inclusive company. Curt Schilling has been advised that his conduct was unacceptable and his employment with ESPN has been terminated.
Related | Why Curt Schilling Was 'Blindsided' by the Backlash Over His Anti-Trans Post
On Tuesday, Schilling shared a transphobic post to Facebook along with the comment:
"A man is a man no matter what they call themselves. I don't care what they are, who they sleep with, men's room was designed for the penis, women's not so much. Now you need laws telling us differently? Pathetic."
He later mansplained that his comment was "innocuous and non-aggressive" and that he was simply a victim of people who were "dying to be offended" to "create some sort of faux cause to rally behind."
Schilling has refused to comment on his termination, but his son Grant previously took to Facebook on Tuesday to defend his dad:
"And while I will say he's not the most well informed in the modern LGBT+ culture, i can assure you he's made great strides to understand people today. If he were a bigot he wouldn't have allowed my Trans friends to stay over, he's respected pronouns and name changes- never once have I heard him say something to me that I thought he should keep quiet about."
This, however, is not the first time Schilling's comments have landed him in hot water at ESPN. In August he was suspended for a month after comparing radical Muslims to Nazis, and last month he suggested Hillary Clinton be "buried under a jail" over her email scandal.
Schilling, being a former professional baseball player, should know, then, that it's one, two, three strikes you're out at the old ballgame known as modern society.
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