ESPN has announced that it’s ending its association with former Boston Red Sox pitcher and until-today baseball color analyst Curt Schilling, over an anti-transgender post that the World Series winner made on his Facebook wall earlier this week. According to widely available screen captures of the picture (which Schilling has since removed), the post centered on the ongoing national arguments about “bathroom laws” like North Carolina’s HB2, suggesting that such legislation is required to keep predators away from “your daughter.” Schilling also apparently added his own comment to the post, reading, “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.”
Unlike past incidents of people being “let go” from the sports network, ESPN made no effort to make Schilling’s removal sound like anything other than a man being unceremoniously fired from his high-profile job. “ESPN is an inclusive company,” they wrote in a statement. “Curt Schilling has been advised that his conduct was unacceptable and his employment with ESPN has been terminated.” ESPN—which is owned by Disney—previously suspended the baseball star over anti-Muslim comments he made last September on Twitter.
For his own part, Schilling fired back at the outcry over the post, in a blog post that starts with the title, “The Hunt To Be Offended,” and then just sort of snowballs from there. “Let’s make one thing clear right up front,” he starts. “If you get offended by ANYTHING in this post, that’s your fault, all yours.” He also expressed the opinion that anything he said was, “My opinion, 100% mine, and only mine. I don’t represent anyone but myself here, on facebook, on twitter, anywhere,” a sentiment that ESPN and Disney seem to have been unwilling to co-sign on.