Lance Berkman's Radio Interview: As Logically Questionable as His Radio Ad

When Lance Berkman first cut that radio ad urging a "no" vote on Houston's Proposition 1, the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance (HERO), many pro-HERO baseball fans on Twitter expressed a hope that he was just reading off a script and didn't understand the discriminatory nature of his remarks. Turns out... nope, not so much.

Berkman went on Houston's KTRH 740 AM radio on Wednesday to talk about HERO's defeat, and he was not particularly gracious in victory. He decried the "digital persecution" he felt after the ad was released without a hint of irony—ironic, because the ordinance he helped torpedo was meant to stop persecution of several protected classes. Berkman said:

"To me tolerance is the virtue that’s killing this country. We’re tolerant of everything. You know, everything is okay, and as long as you want to do it and as long as it feels good to you then it’s perfectly acceptable do it. Those are the kinds of things that lead you down a slippery slope, and you’ll get in trouble in a hurry."

If any politician said "tolerance is the virtue that's killing this country," it would likely kill his campaign. Tolerance, of course, is part of what America was built on (e.g., freedom of religion and of the press), and you could argue that all of American history has been a march toward more tolerance (e.g., the civil-rights movement). But Berkman also uses the exact words "slippery slope," which is a well-known logical fallacy. Instilling fear about a hypothetical, future, extreme version of your opponent's position says nothing about the actual issue on the table today.

Berkman also told the radio host, "I didn’t expect the mayor to make a personal attack. I didn’t expect her to talk about my girls or my family." He was referring to a series of tweets wherein Houston Mayor Annise Parker, a HERO supporter, responded to Berkman's ads. She did bring up Berkman's daughters, but only because they were the very core of Berkman's argument in the ad. And the tweet in question was hardly an attack on them. This was the only mention Parker made of Berkman's family:

Lance Berkman played in St. Louis. Guess his girls didn't go to his games! SL has a non-discrimination ordinance.-A http://t.co/gzEbKIYOd9

— Annise Parker (@AnniseParker) October 5, 2015

In the interview, Berkman tried to clarify his stance on equal protection. "I’m against depriving anybody of their civil rights, but by the same token the ordinance was so poorly written," he said. Except here is the full text of the ballot question:

"Are you in favor of the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance, Ord. No. 2014-530, which prohibits discrimination in city employment and city services, city contracts, public accommodations, private employment, and housing based on an individual’s sex, race, color, ethnicity, national origin, age, familial status, marital status, military status, religion, disability, sexual orientation, genetic information, gender identity, or pregnancy?"

Really dangerous language there! It's hard to take Berkman seriously that he's against depriving anybody of their civil rights when the ordinance he opposed is explicitly about anti-discrimination against all manner of people (not just transgender people) in all sorts of venues (not just bathrooms).

Finally, Berkman said he Googled around to see what the reaction to his ad was like. "A lot of the comments were not in favor of letting the HERO ordinance pass, which was a little encouraging," he said. So there is the final damning portion of the interview: Lance Berkman is dumb enough to read the online comments. Case closed!

What Yesterday's Election Results Mean for Baseball

If you blinked you probably missed it, but yesterday was Election Day in 32 states. While federal elections like president, senator, and representative rarely affect matters as serious as baseball, local elections often do hinge upon such matters that touch our daily lives. Several local elections yesterday had a baseball angle that could affect fanbases of four different teams; herein, educate yourself about the decisions made by one-quarter of your fellow citizens:

• Houston Equal Rights Ordinance (HERO). This well-publicized ballot measure in the City of Houston (you probably got a New York Times alert about it) doesn't affect baseball per se, but it had a significant baseball angle. Astros legend Lance Berkman (in)famously recorded a radio ad opposing HERO in September; you may have noticed from the Twitter firestorm it ignited. If passed, the initiative would have banned discrimination "based on an individual’s sex, race, color, ethnicity, national origin, age, familial status, marital status, military status, religion, disability, sexual orientation, genetic information, gender identity, or pregnancy," but opponents seized on the specific gender-identity language in the bill and turned it into a referendum on transgender acceptance. Anti-HERO ads, including Berkman's, used messaging like "no men in women's bathrooms" and "troubled men," leading to backlash against Berkman for prejudicial statements and against the whole campaign for fearmongering atop the incredibly specific bathroom issue. The vote was expected to be close (though Houston may be in Texas, it is still an urban area and leans Democratic); however, with 95% of precincts reporting as of last night, the city's voters roundly rejected the ordinance, 61% to 39%.
• St. Petersburg City Council. Three seats on the city council of St. Petersburg, Florida, were on the ballot last night, and the intractable stadium saga of the Tampa Bay Rays was a starring issue. The Rays want out of their lease at Tropicana Field, one of baseball's most unattractive ballparks but, more importantly, easily its poorest-located, as Tampa-area traffic patterns make it miserable to trek to cross-bay St. Petersburg to see a game. St. Pete Mayor Rick Kriseman wants to let the Rays explore new stadium sites in other communities in Tampa Bay, but the city council has repeatedly blocked his proposals in a series of close votes—most recently, deadlocking at 4–4 in May. Yesterday, three of those city council seats were on the ballot, two of which were held by the "Anti-Rays Party"—those who oppose letting the team move. However, the "Pro-Rays Party" flipped one of those seats, as Kriseman-proposal supporter Lisa Wheeler-Brown won the seat being vacated by term-limited proposal opponent Wengay Newton. This means that allies of Kriseman and the Rays now hold five seats on the eight-seat council. That, in turn, means the Rays may now be able to cut a deal to leave St. Petersburg for a more economically sustainable part of metro Tampa—and avoid becoming the next incarnation of the Montréal Expos.
• Mission Rock development. Among the ballot questions put to voters in San Francisco yesterday was Local Measure D, asking residents' permission to develop the area around a parking lot just south of the Giants' AT&T Park. The proposed mixed-use complex for the 28-acre site, Mission Rock, would erect 1,500 rental homes, including some affordable housing, as well as office space, shops, restaurants, and a park. The Giants endorsed the ballot measure and threw their full weight behind it in the hopes that the new neighborhood would evolve into the Giants' equivalent of Wrigleyville or the area around Fenway Park. The Giants' investment in Mission Rock would generate millions of dollars in revenue for the team that it says is necessary for it to compete with its larger-market rivals (a good way of translating San Francisco's anti-Dodgers sentiment into votes). In the face of the Giants' advocacy and no organized opposition, Local Measure D passed yesterday with over 73% of the vote, meaning Mission Rock could become a reality very soon.
• 50-50 raffles in Texas. Not nearly as sexy as the other three elections here, Texas's Proposition 4 amended the state's constitution to allow sports teams to hold more of those charity 50-50 raffles that you see at so many baseball games. (Yes, apparently a constitutional amendment was necessary to do this—previously it was unconstitutional to hold more than two such raffles per year and to give out cash prizes for them.) The proposition passed 69% to 31%, so you can expect more cash drawings at Rangers and Astros games going forward.

Lance Berkman, Here's What You Don't Understand

On November 3, Houston will vote on a local referendum known as the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance—an anti-discrimination law protecting classes such as sex, race, ethnicity, national origin, age, religion, disability, pregnancy, marital status, and sexual orientation. When it was introduced and eventually passed by the city council in 2014, it seemed like a pretty sensible way to enforce the protection of every Houstonian, regardless of their identity, per that whole "all men are created equal" thing and the whole "14th Amendment to the Constitution" thing. But the provisions of the law protecting LGBT (and especially T) people raised the ire of Houston's conservative community, the law went to court, and in July the all-Republican Texas Supreme Court suspended the law and ordered it to be put to a public vote.

You probably heard about the ordinance for the first time last week, when former Houston Astros great Lance Berkman recorded a 60-second radio ad urging people to vote against the ordinance. The ad received surprising but understandable levels of condemnation on Twitter and from the sports-journalism world for not only its message, but its specific language. Here's what Berkman says:

"Vote no on Proposition 1. No men in women's bathrooms. No boys in girls' showers or locker rooms. I'm Lance Berkman. I played professional baseball for 15 years, but my family is more important. My wife and I have four daughters. Proposition 1, the 'bathroom ordinance,' would allow troubled men to enter women's public bathrooms, showers, and locker rooms. This would violate their privacy and put them in harm's way. That's just wrong. We must prevent this potential danger by closing women's restrooms to men rather than waiting for a crime to happen. Under Proposition 1, if restaurants, businesses, and sports facilities don't allow a man into a woman's restroom, they would be subject to penalties and fines. This proposed ordinance says that it will stop discrimination, but in reality, it discriminates against people who believe, like me, that members of the opposite sex should not be forced to share restrooms or locker rooms. Join me to stop the violation of women's privacy and discrimination against women. Vote no on Proposition 1: no men in women's bathrooms, no boys in girls' showers or locker rooms."

Berkman's critics pounced on specific statements from the ad, paid for by the Campaign for Houston PAC, and made several valid points. But it's worth dissecting this ad in its entirety, as many of the most troubling and deceptive fallacies remained un-sussed-out over the weekend.

• "Bathroom ordinance." Prop 1 isn't an ordinance governing who can go into which bathrooms. It's a broad anti-discrimination law, protecting people on the basis of sex, race, religion, and more—not just sexual orientation and gender identity. Furthermore, even as the law affects LGBT Houstonians, it doesn't just deal with bathrooms. It protects them against all forms of discrimination—by their employer, by their landlord, by business owners, at the polling place, at restaurants—and generally allows them to enjoy the equal protections that the United States supposedly affords all its citizens. Boiling Prop 1 down to just bathrooms is ignoring the massive other components of what the bill aims to do—and essentially states that an opponent's concerns over bathroom encounters override their desire to see every class of citizen protected under the law. Even social conservatives can agree that people whose lifestyles they find repugnant deserve the same constitutional rights—indeed, conservatives are often quite keen to see that the Constitution is followed and enforced. Prop 1 would allow the 14th Amendment—the one granting equal protection—to be explicitly enforced on the local level in Houston.
• "Troubled men." Transgender women are not troubled men. A born male coming to identify as a woman is a natural condition; it's not a mental illness or a crime. Indeed, they're not even men; many have lived as women for years, are legally women, and have no worse a claim on the women's bathroom than biological women.
• "Harm's way"; "potential danger"; "waiting for a crime to happen." These phrases strongly imply that transgender people are more likely to be criminals or, specifically, sex offenders. This is simply false. As explained above, being transgender is a natural condition, not some sickness or a symptom of depravity. There has never been a recorded incident of a transgender person attacking a straight person in a bathroom. There are, however, thousands of same-sex sexual predators—e.g., men born as men who are attracted to young boys—who use public bathrooms and could use those same opportunities to attack children. Statistically, non-transgender people should be a much greater concern to any person or group, like Berkman, that professes to be afraid of "creeps." Finally, if a sexual predator were as lecherous and inclined to commit a crime as Prop 1 opponents fear, do they really think that these criminals would be deterred by rules governing which bathroom they can enter? Prop 1 opponents view the ordinance as giving predators "legal cover" to be in the opposite bathroom, but, of course, they would have no legal cover if they commit a crime there—they'd be charged for that crime. If they do not commit a crime—like the thousands of transgender people who just want to feel comfortable when using the bathroom—there would be no need for charges.
• "If restaurants, businesses, and sports facilities don't allow a man into a woman's restroom..." Berkman makes it sound like any man would be granted free access to women's bathrooms. This is incorrect; men entering the women's room would still be against the rules. But, again, transgender women (former men who have come to identify as women) are not men. They are women because that is how they feel in their bodies, regardless of their biology. People like Berkman fundamentally do not understand that gender is an identity and a social construct; it is not a simple matter of plumbing equipment.
• "In reality, it discriminates against people who believe, like me, that members of the opposite sex should not be forced to share restrooms or locker rooms"; "discrimination against women." I don't need to re-address the point that transgender people are, in fact, not of the opposite sex. Instead, as Inigo Montoya would say, Berkman keeps using that word "discriminates"; I do not think it means what he thinks it means. Discrimination means "the unjust or prejudicial treatment of different categories of people or things." No one, Berkman included, would be prosecuted or denied legal protections based on their anti-LGBT beliefs. But when a person's beliefs include denying other people rights and legal protections—which, by definition, is true of people who oppose an anti-discrimination law—those beliefs must be overridden in a democratic, human-rights-based society like ours. They may continue to have those beliefs, and they can't be thrown into jail or denied service for them, but other people are allowed to find them repugnant—that's the flip side of allowing everyone their opinion—and yes, they'll have to live with a society that makes them uncomfortable. But just because Berkman doesn't like it, he's not being discriminated against. And women in the bathroom next to transgender people certainly aren't; they're using the bathroom freely and voluntarily.