ESPN's Curt Schilling Goes On Anti-Transgender Rant

Memo to Curt Schilling: You can delete it from your Facebook page, but that doesn't mean it's erased from the Internet.

Schilling, the ESPN baseball analyst and former major league pitcher, posted a surprisingly offensive meme on his Facebook page Monday, mocking the transgender community in general, and the lack of access to public bathroom facilities in particular.

We won't be embedding the meme here, but SB Nation's Outsports took a screenshot before Schilling took it down.

Not content to merely share the meme, Schilling weighed in with a 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."

Schilling responded to the controversy stirred by the meme in a rambling blog post Tuesday. "I didn’t post that ugly looking picture," he wrote. "I made a comment about the basic functionality of mens and womens restrooms, period.

"And for you people too dense to understand this one very important thing. My opinion, 100% mine, and only mine. I don’t represent anyone but myself here, on facebook, on twitter, anywhere."

It's a surprising bout of bigotry for Schilling, who was suspended by ESPN in August for posting intolerant comments comparing Muslims to Nazis. After that incident, Schilling claimed he'd changed and acknowledged on Twitter, "this was a bad decision in every way on my part."

Last month, Schilling opined on Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, saying she should "be buried under a jail somewhere" because she used a private email server for government business as secretary of state.

The network confirmed on Monday that Schilling would return to his role as an analyst on Monday Night Baseball this season.

We'll see how long that lasts.

UPDATE: 9:09 p.m. -- ESPN said in a statement that it was "taking this matter very seriously and we are in the process of reviewing it," according to Sports Illustrated reporter Richard Ditsch.