Prejudice and persecution have no place in my life.

One of my earliest multimedia ventures was a series of videos created for my newspaper.

It's been a while between posts for me because I've been a busy man. All you need to do to confirm that is to go to the North Attleborough Community Television website (northtv.net), click on the Community Channel link and scroll down to North TV Sports. Open the "see episodes" link and you'll find that on 10 of the first 15 selections, I'm the fellow that provided the play-by-play voice -- and there are a lot more following those as well.

It's a job I love -- sometimes, even more than the half-century I spent as a print journalist. It has allowed me to utilize a different skill I always assumed I had, and there are no deadlines other than to get the telecast started on time. Once it's done, all I need to do is pack up the electronics and head home -- no three-hour writing sessions afterward that dangerously elevate the heart rate.

And, of course, it keeps me close to something I dearly love, high school sports. I covered my first game as a "professional" journalist on Saturday, Sept. 27, 1969 -- football, North Attleboro 22, Mansfield 6 at Memorial Park, as I recall -- for the dearly departed Mansfield News, the weekly newspaper of my hometown. If this announcing gig is indeed my final act in a career that brought me to every NFL stadium in the nation, then it will be a great way to bow out and I intend to give it my best effort until that day comes.

I've been doing this for a long time.

You've probably also read in my ramblings that the one thing I believe I did in my career that may have actually been helpful to society rather than just a source of moderate entertainment in a localized audience was a commitment I made to treat female athletes as equals when it came to my respect for their accomplishments and my efforts to publicize them. It wasn't always an easy or popular thing to do; many male readers responded angrily when The Sun Chronicle started equalizing the coverage of boys' and girls' sports in the late 1970s, just a few years after Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 dictated that all educational institutions that received federal funding of any sort had to take steps to equalize opportunities for women in every facet of their operations, particularly in athletics. 

Title IX didn't force newsgathering entities to equalize coverage. That was a decision to be made out of what was right, and what sold papers. As it turned out, both worked for us. Offering new coverage to 50 percent of the population that had previously been underserved by the local media, if not entirely ignored, eventually helped the bottom line. Today, there isn't a media outlet that would deliberately ignore women's sports. And those critics that called me every name in the book back in the 1970s? They all had daughters and were later praising us for covering their games.

But after all these years, I still have my critics. And in this current national climate of intolerance, prejudice and exclusion, they are relentless in their ignorance. 

Most of that stems from the fact that in my profiles on social media, I clearly state how I feel about another issue of equality that has gained traction among the zealots of the radical right-wing of the national Republican Party.

It's usually just four words: "I support trans rights."

Yes, I support the right of any individual to enjoy what the Constitution and its many amendments have promised them as Americans -- equality. I support their desire to survive and thrive as human beings, even if it is in in a society that now paints them with the same brush as Adolf Hitler used against those of the Jewish faith in his rise to despotic power in 1930s Germany. In the circles of the "Make America Great Again" movement, transgender individuals have become the new enemy, lurking with evil intent into the girls' locker rooms and bathrooms in every corner of America, looking to harass or displace defenseless cisgender females.

The issue has been blown far beyond any level of believability by the MAGA movement and its diabolical leaders. Donald Trump and his associates turned the "no men in women's sports" mantra into a rallying cry for their supporters -- many of whom have never known nor will ever know a transgender individual, but are accepting the messaging that they should fear them and persecute them because Trump says they should.

Let's not forget that in recent testimony before Congress, NCAA president Charlie Baker (the former governor of our commonwealth) said that he knew of no more than 10 transgender athletes among the roughly 510,000 young men and women competing in NCAA-sponsored athletics. That comes out to 0.002 of one percent, in case you're wondering.

It's even more difficult to pin down current figures for how many transgender athletes there are high school sports in the United States. It's estimated that maybe 1 percent of all high school children in the U.S. identify as transgender, and of those, an even smaller percentage compete in athletics. And it's far more difficult for any of them to do so, as the hateful Republican rhetoric has resulted in bans upon transgender participation in 29 states. 

But if you've been around as long as I have, and have seen as many young athletes as I did at the schools I covered, those figures are likely to come to life for you eventually.

(Disclaimer: I am not going to use names for any of the individuals to whom I may be referring in the following paragraphs. Some have become well-known, others remain lurking in the darkness, but it is not my intention to add to the grief of those who were aggrieved, or to somehow legitimize the reprehensible actions of those that attacked them.)

In my career, I have known plenty of athletes that would not fit the MAGA template of "normal." I have known gay athletes and transgender athletes. I have never been judgmental about any of them, because my only concern was about what they did between the white lines. The fields and courts were my domain, but I basically had no need for any knowledge of what they did in their private lives -- unless it was their choice to share that information with me, as a few did over those many decades. Any information they shared was kept private, and will continue be none of anyone else's business.

I am approaching another basketball season, which normally is the happiest time of year for me. Basketball is my favorite sport to call -- easiest, too, in that there are only 10 players on the court at any time and I don't need binoculars to see them. And I have a wonderful history with the sport. My high school sweetheart was a basketball player that had to endure the confusion and upheaval of switching from the six-girl game of olde to the modern rules. She died in 1986 of breast cancer, but she remains my inspiration for recognizing the equal stature of female athletes. My closest friends are also former basketball players. Maybe I would have been, too, if only I could have dribbled with my left hand and released a shot without displaying the mechanics of a marionette.

But last year was probably the least enjoyable of all the seasons in which I have covered basketball, either as a writer or an announcer. 

I loved announcing the games, and I did at least one game or more for six local boys' or girls' teams last year -- and a total of around 30, I believe. But there was an undercurrent that became intolerable.

There was one transgender athlete among the players on those teams. She was a four-year member of her team, afforded an opportunity to compete just as any young American woman has under the laws of the land. Personally, I did not become aware of her uniqueness until two years into her high school career, and probably never would have known if not for attempts by a notorious muck-raking blogger to out her.

To this day, I have no reason to view her as anything other than a talented and personable young woman. The details of her transition are of no interest nor any concern to me. She has gone on to college and I sincerely hope that her life is fulfilling and joyous.

In the wake of that blogger's initial attempt at an outing -- which was pulled off the Internet mere hours after its initial appearance -- the whisper campaign began in earnest. Details of the initial revelation were leaked to anti-trans websites which specialize in sensationalizing the participation of transgender athletes and turning them into pariahs. Schedules of games and scrimmages appeared on those websites and seized upon by those that wanted to stage protests and continue the demonization of a young girl that just wanted to be part of a team with other young women with whom she had grown up.

The demonization also extended to her coaches and her school, and even those in the media that objectively wrote about her or described her accomplishments on electronic media. 

As a former journalist of some ability, I was able to call upon those skills to track down some of those that aided in the demonization -- including parents of athletes from other local schools who made it too easy because they didn't even bother to hide their identities. Much as I wanted to act upon this by revealing those activities to school administrators where applicable, I did not. I have always had a strict "prime directive," if you will -- to not extend blame to young athletes for the sins of their parents. Kids have always gotten a break from me, even though I know that their future behavior, positive or otherwise, may be attributable to the environments in which they were raised. 

Sadly, these individuals achieved their goal. They eventually shamed this young athlete off her team despite the best efforts of her coach and her friends to protect her. There was a protest staged off school property at one site where her team scrimmaged. Another school threatened not to play her team, but backed off. And the environment in the crowds at neutral-site tournaments became toxic, resulting in the eventual decision by her to end her high school basketball career prematurely.

I fully believe that as recently as a decade ago, this young woman could have happily played her entire career with nary an eyebrow raised. Others had, in fact. But under the exclusionary policies of both Trump administrations, whispered declarations of hatred and bigotry have found their way into public policy. 

Trump and his minions needed a figurehead for its bigoted MAGA base to embrace, and they quickly found one.

Gaines: MAGA's face of intolerance.

Ever since a swimmer at the University of Kentucky named Riley Gaines turned her personal disappointment over a tie for fifth place with a transgender athlete in her event at the NCAA championships into a national crusade against all transgender athletes, the political climate has shifted disturbingly toward intolerance and persecution.

I've written about Ms. Gaines before in this space, and I need not waste further effort doing so. Perform a Google search and you'll learn all you need to know about how she turned her personal prejudices into a lucrative career of legitimizing her intolerance. She has become the darling of the MAGA movement's quest to make transgender individuals into villains.

While you're at it, check out the most recent effort by journalist/podcaster Pablo Torre to expose the myth of Riley Gaines. You can find the episode in which he and a researcher from Mother Jones magazine look deeply into Gaines' background following her infamous race against Lia Thomas, and present observations by her former U of K teammates, at this link: https://youtu.be/iKUl8lkuGOc?si=sGErnRpqSq2GHxEG

Everyone in America is entitled to an opinion, no matter how ridiculously wrong it might be. I hear the MAGA contention every day about how there is an army of young men lined up and waiting to identify themselves as women and take over women's sports. Yet I can tell you without hesitation that I have seen no evidence whatsoever to back up that ludicrous contention. And if I haven't seen it in my little corner of the world, it's likely that a lot of other observers of sports at all levels haven't seen it, either. 

There aren't any secret clinics in our high schools where young boys walk in and become young girls against their will, as our increasingly-addled president has contended in his stump speeches. There is no "transgender for everybody" policy. What there has been, although it is being eroded by increasingly restrictive and reactionary laws, was the right of an individual to choose the lifestyle or physical existence that most accurately reflects how that individual sees himself or herself.

I have never been in the position of being a parent whose child was either born with physical reasons that would require a choice of gender, or that was so conflicted in his or her sexual identity in a manner that could be resolved only through gender reassignment. Nor, I believe, are most of those that are complaining the loudest about what they perceive to be a widespread conspiracy by men to take over women's sports and invade so-called safe spaces for women. Yet as opposed to them, I have always tried to imagine myself walking in the shoes of those that face that daunting dilemma before forming an opinion.

And the answer is always the same. I would want what's most likely to bring happiness and personal equilibrium to my child. 

That's a decision that can be made only by those facing those choices -- and not by bigoted and judgmental know-it-alls that seem to take their cue from the ill-informed rants of a president that has already been found to be a sex offender in a court of law, and had a long association with a pedophile and human trafficker and may yet be proven to have partaken in such pursuits himself.

Even Nixon knew what was right.

Let's also make note that 100 years ago, women interested in athletics were shunned or regarded as abnormal. Fast-forward to the 1950s, and young women were still being advised not to compete in contact sports because of feared damage to their reproductive organs. And it wasn't until 1972, when a conservative Republican president signed one of the most liberal pieces of bipartisan legislation that ordered equality for female athletes in all manners -- gym access, uniforms, equipment, quality of coaching, you name it. That was 53 years ago and some knuckle-dragging males still complain about it, but eliminating gender discrimination was the right thing to do, and even Richard Nixon knew it. 

These days, the anti-trans element are using Title IX incorrectly and dishonestly as a defense of their desire to ban transgender individuals from participation. In fact, Title IX eliminated discrimination based upon gender. Whether you're male or female, you're supposed to get equal opportunity -- regardless of how you arrived at your identity.

One of my lingering critics is an individual that I would avoid entirely, but cannot for reasons that will not be revealed here. This individual seems to believe he has a moral directive to expose my support of women's athletics as false because I also support the rights of transgender individuals, and in a recent back-and-forth of social-media comments that were exchanged on that topic, here are the "highlights" of one that was directed to me:

"What's the matter Mark? Too many years pontificating from your soap box and always getting the last word in? … [You] probably haven't noticed that a majority (read millions) oppose males on women's teams and in their private spaces. … Ya' know Mark, perhaps if you spent decades living with a woman and raising two daughters who played sports, one of them at a high level, your worldview might be different. Stop being such a pompous ass."

My only response now and forever is thus: 

First, my life-long support and advocacy for equality for women in athletics is on the record and unimpeachable. 

Second, I believe in the rights of all Americans to enjoy the benefits of equality, regardless of race, religion, national origin or sexual identity, as guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States, its many amendments, and corresponding state constitutions and existing state and federal human-rights legislation. 

And finally, my personal life is none of this individual's business nor anyone else's, unless I choose to share it -- either personally to those that have earned my trust, or as I have publicly on a few occasions over a half-century-plus as a professional writer. I can assure you that my life is traditional, often quite boring, and forged by 72 years of life experience -- and while I may not have experienced some things that others have in their lifetimes, I have always been open to understanding as much of what life has to offer -- whether I might be destined to experience it or not.

In other words, I'm not a closed-minded bigot. And I don't waste my life sending letters to school administrators demanding to know how they are going to persecute a transgender athlete and the coach that treated her as a human being.

The sun has risen and set many times since the end of last basketball season, and it will continue to do so. The universe goes about its business every day, blissfully unconcerned with the petty squabbles of human beings, and there are times when I believe I should learn from its indifference and try my best to emulate it. But as I get older, I find it much more difficult to suffer fools -- particularly those that have attacked my friends.

I hope that, long before the basketballs come off the shelves, I will put all this behind me and feel refreshed and enthusiastic for the upcoming season. I dearly love the sport and I work with good people that share the same level of commitment. I'll call the games as enthusiastically and accurately as I can -- and I promise you, I won't give a single second of thought to what any of the young athletes have under their shorts or how they live their private lives.

We'd be a better society if more people took the same approach.

MARK FARINELLA has covered high school basketball and other sports in southeastern Massachusetts for 57 years. Contact him at theownersbox2020@gmail.com.