Appeals Court Upholds Firing of College Official Over Anti-Gay Op-Ed

Why does it seem that while claiming that it is gays who want special rights it is actually the Christianists who want special rights?  The special right to bully at will, the right to stigmatize and denigrate others without consequence, and, in the case of Crystal Dixon (pictured at left), to ignore the responsibilities at the University of Toledo and engage in an anti-gay rant in an op-ed in the Toledo Free Press.  This demand by Christianists boils down to an incredible level of selfishness and open contempt for the rights of others.  The Christianists believe that their rights and beliefs trump everything and everyone else.  The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, however, ruled otherwise and affirmed the University of Toledo's decision to fire Ms. Dixon from her position as a high-level human-resources administrator.  The Chronicle of Higher Education looks at the slap down delivered to Dixon and by extension other self-centered bigots like her.  Here are excerpts"

In a ruling handed down on Monday, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit held that the administrator's column "contradicted the very policies she was charged with creating, promoting, and enforcing," and cannot be excused as merely a statement of her own views as a private citizen. The panel affirmed a lower court's decision to dismiss the administrator's lawsuit accusing the public university of violating her constitutional rights by firing her.

At the center of the case was an opinion essay that Crystal Dixon, who had been the university's interim associate vice president for human resources, published in the Toledo Free Press in April 2008. In it, she wrote that she takes "great umbrage at the notion that those choosing the homosexual lifestyle are 'civil-rights victims.'" She argued that she "cannot wake up tomorrow and not be a black woman" because she is biologically and genetically such "as my creator intended." But, she said, "daily, thousands of homosexuals make a life decision to leave the gay lifestyle" with the help of groups such as Exodus International, which claim to be able to help people overcome homosexual desires.

She was fired after a hearing in which she stood by her views but argued that they did not affect her performance as a human-resources administrator, citing her recent decisions to hire "one, possibly two practicing homosexuals" in her own department.

In upholding the dismissal of Ms. Dixon's lawsuit, the federal appeals court said she differed from other employees cited in her equal-protection claim in that her speech, and not theirs, contradicted university policies. The appeals panel said her essay "spoke on policy issues related directly to her position at the university," and the government's interests as an employer outweighed her free-speech interests in the dispute.

Note how Dixon cited the fraudulent bullshit disseminated by the "ex-gay" crowd to support he bigotry.  That alone in my view makes it clear that the woman is too ignorant to hold any senior university opinion.  We can expect shrieking and flying spittle to engulf the professional Christian set who will falsely claim Christians are being persecuted when in fact it is they who are doing the persecuting.