ESPN commentator Curt Schilling has once again stirred controversy with his comments, this time by posting an anti-transgender meme to his Facebook page criticizing policies that allow men who claim to be women to use a woman’s bathroom.
On his Facebook page, the former Major League Baseball pitcher posted an image of an overweight man dressed as a woman with a harsh caption. “Let him in!” the caption says, “to the restroom with your daughter or else you’re a narrow minded, judgmental, unloving, racist bigot who needs to die!!!”
Schilling added a message of his own to the post in an effort to clarify what he meant by posting the image. Schilling wrote, “A man is a man no matter what they call themselves.”
Schilling added, “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.”
Almost immediately the posting made news and garnered both support and criticism. But as for the criticism, Schilling later said he just didn’t understand how anyone could be against what he posted.
“This, I don’t wanna say snuck up on me, but it did,” Schilling said in an interview on Boston’s WEEI radio. “My comment was as innocuous and non-aggressive as anything anybody can say. I’m still trying to figure out how all this happened.”
The former Boston Red Sox pitcher admitted ESPN told him to stop commenting about politics, but he insisted he didn’t see the transgender bathroom issue as politics.
“I was kind of blindsided by this one,” Schilling said. “When I got the call [from ESPN], I was like, ‘I don’t get this, how does this become that.'”
“I stated a fact,” the ESPN commentator added. “Men’s bathrooms were designed for people who stand up, and women’s weren’t. It’s nothing more than that.”
Schilling also wondered aloud if someone at ESPN was trying to gin something up in order to get him fired.
As for ESPN, the sports network said it is taking Schilling’s Facebook post “very seriously.”
A spokesman for the network added that they are “in the process of reviewing it.”
This is far from the first time Schilling’s outspoken positions has gotten him in trouble with his employer. Only weeks ago, for instance, Schilling claimed that Hillary Clinton belongs in jail, not on a presidential ticket.
While the Clinton comment didn’t get a rise from ESPN, the network did suspended Schilling last August for posting a tweet comparing radical Islamist terrorists to German Nazis.
A month later Schilling returned to ESPN even as many argued for his termination. Still, his status with the network seems to be in a state of limbo despite his recent agreement to stop posting political comments.
It remains to be seen if this latest social media flap will find the former big leaguer left permanently on the sidelines.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com