ESPN fires Curt Schilling not for expressing a controversial position, but for expressing a controversial CONSERVATIVE position
To the meme, Schilling added, "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.”
It's a terrible thing to point out that ladies' rooms don't have urinals.
So ESPN fired him, thereby proving his point. Schilling had earlier been removed as an announcer for the Little League World Series because of a very reasonable comparison of extremist Muslims- not Muslims generally, mind you, but the likes of bin Laden and ISIS- to Hitler.
ESPN defends itself by responding that as a medium of pubic information it has every right to defend itself from controversial statements by its employees which might reflect badly upon it. It might even be possible to take that remark seriously if it fired people for promoting leftist positions on social issues, too. When was the last time anyone was fired for supporting marriage redefinition (or using the loaded slogan "marriage equality," for that matter) or for the media's almost universal misrepresentation of the intent and effects of North Carolina's "bathroom law? " When that happens- when the double standard is dropped- it might be possible to take ESPN's response seriously. But not until. It's only social conservatives who lose their jobs for expressing their opinions on controversial social issues, even- and perhaps especially- in the media!
Ok. I can see how the bizarre picture might be offensive. But otherwise, Schilling simply states a plausible opinion and accurately states the position of the Left toward those who hold it. This is politically correct thought control at its worst. It's one more example of the determination of the social elites to define anything they disagree with as beyond the pale of reasonable discourse and treat it in the same way they would treat actual bigotry rather than a difference in values and opinion.
Transgendered men and women remain genetically men and women even after so-called "gender re-assignment" surgery. They may have different looking genitals. They may take hormones to distort their physiognomy . They may call themselves "she" instead of "he," or vice versa. They may even be legally treated as if they had done something to actually change they are at a genetic level. Reasonable and polite people may even accommodate them in all of this. Neither Schilling nor I nor any reasonable person has a problem with any of that.
But when they start telling us what to think and in the process denying basic biological facts, that's where the line needs to be drawn. Schilling's remarks might have been impolite, although they were made under the provocation of a national drive to compel people to adopt a certain very debatable and frankly dubious attitude not toward matters of etiquette toward transgendered people, but toward the very nature of sexual identity. And in this, as in so much else, what the cultural left is stigmatizing and penalizing is the very attitude society itself has always taken, which until recently was wholly uncontroversial, and which others have every right to continue to hold.
This is nothing more or less than mind-control of a kind which has become second nature to the totalitarian left.
Schilling responds to the whole business on his blog, here.
This is beyond ridiculous. I personally refuse to use Firefox or Thunderbird because of the Brandon Eich affair. As of yesterday, I will no longer patronize Target. I do not object in the slightest to people disagreeing with me. But when they use Gestapo tactics to coerce others simply because they disagree with them, that's where I draw the line.
The time has come for social conservatives and sane people generally to give the gender-bending zanies a taste of their own medicine and start boycotting people. I've mentioned the folks on my list so far; I invite you to join me. And maybe it's time for all of us to boycott ESPN until it re-hires Schilling and apologizes for this heavy-handed and just plain un-American overreaction to a perfectly reasonable and factual assertion of a man's sincerely held and not at all unreasonable opinion.
The left needs to learn that persuasion, and not intimidation and coercion, are the tools with which civilized people deal with disagreements even about things concerning which they feel strongly. It is ESPN, far more than Schilling, who is out of line here. And it needs to stop lying about the positions and motivations of the people with whom it disagrees.
Let's all support Curt Schilling and call ESPN to account. The picture may have been in poor taste and even hurtful to transgendered people. To ask Schilling, a public figure, to apologize for that would be reasonable and not at all excessive. But he has every right to his opinion as he expressed it, and neither ESPN nor anyone else has any right to penalize him for it.
BTW, get a load of the New York Times's bizarre story on the incident. This is journalism?
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