Curt Schilling on ESPN Firing: ‘I’m Not Transphobic’

Curt Schilling defended his behavior Friday morning after being fired from ESPN over a controversial post on social media.

During a radio interview with Breitbart News Daily on SiriusXM, the former Boston Red Sox pitcher said that the post, which appeared to poke fun at defenders of a controversial North Carolina “bathroom bill” that restricts bathrooms based on the birth sex of the occupants, doesn’t reflect any prejudice.

“I’m not transphobic, I’m not homophobic,” Schilling told Breitbart News Daily host Stephen K. Bannon. “As long as you’re not sleeping with my wife, I don’t care who you sleep with.”

Schilling added that he was far from a homophobe, saying that his teenage son started the LGBT club at his high school.

“If my sixteen year old son came home tomorrow and said to me ‘Dad, I want to be a woman,’ I would be disappointed. Because as a man and a father I want my son to experience fatherhood and being a father and being a grandfather and yada yada,” he said during the interview. “But I wouldn’t care. I wouldn’t care. I would not feel any differently about him. I would not love him any less. I would actually be proud of the fact that he’s trying to be true to himself. Even if I don’t agree with whatever it is that’s happening, I’m good with that.”

The former pitcher also also criticized artists like Bruce Springsteen who have boycotted North Carolina over the bathroom bill, calling Springsteen a “hypocrite” for taking a stand over a U.S. state but not Middle Eastern nations with even more restrictive policies around LGBT rights.

This was not the first time ESPN has disciplined Schilling over his behavior on social media. The network suspended him for a month in August after he made a post on Twitter that compared radical Muslims to Nazis. Schilling said that his relationship with the network ultimately didn’t work out because “the rules are different based completely and solely on your perspective and your beliefs.”

“A lot of people can’t or won’t jeopardize what they do for a living to be and espouse the things that they believe and are,” Schilling said. “I’m not that guy.”