University Fires Employee for Saying Gays Have Choice

Here's something relevant to what we care about here:

Ann Arbor, May 26, 2008 / 03:24 pm (CNA).- An administrator at the University of Toledo who was fired for writing an editorial objecting to the comparison of homosexual rights to the civil rights struggles of African Americans and expressing her Christian views against homosexuality has accused the university of violating her First Amendment rights when it terminated her employment earlier this month.

Crystal Dixon, former associate vice president of human resources at the state-run University of Toledo, argued in an April 18 column in the Toledo Free Press that those “choosing the homosexual lifestyle” should not be considered “civil rights victims.” Dixon, who did not identify herself in the column as a university administrator, said that while she cannot change her identity as a black woman, “thousands of homosexuals make a life decision to leave the gay lifestyle.”
(“Administrator fired for criticizing gay rights alleges First Amendment violation”)

The full context of this portion of Ms. Dixon’s response (which was made online and not even in print) is as follows:

I take great umbrage at the notion that those choosing the homosexual lifestyle are "civil rights victims." Here's why. I cannot wake up tomorrow and not be a Black woman. I am genetically and biologically a Black woman and very pleased to be so as my Creator intended. Daily, thousands of homosexuals make a life decision to leave the gay lifestyle . . . .

Within 3 weeks she was fired. It was reported in the Toledo Blade that “A letter to Ms. Dixon informing her of her termination, stated ‘The public position you have taken in the Toledo Free Press is in direct contradiction to university policies and procedures as well as the core values of the strategic plan which is mission critical.’” (“University of Toledo official fired over column”).

But in an interview Ms. Dixon gave on local WDTK talk show Joshua’s Trail this morning, Ms. Dixon said that UT President Dr. Lloyd Jacobs never identified a single university policy that she had violated to justify firing her.

Which isn’t surprising, really.

I’m sure the University of Toledo doesn’t really have any policy, or “mission critical core value” (yuck!) that forbids administrative personnel from holding the opinion that homosexuality is not genetically predetermined. But those who insist that homosexuals have no choice are extremely protective of their point of view. They fiercely cling to the myth that, to paraphrase Otto Preminger's Kommandant Von Scherbach in Stalag 17, "Nobody has ever escaped from the Gay Lifestyle. Not alive, anyway."

But, as for there not being at UT any "core value" that requires signing an allegiance pledge to dubious unproved genetic theories, we can be sure UT does have something that nowadays most all universities have: an executive who’s as conditioned to fear PC thought crimes on his watch. These men and women are as tame as that 90-lb.St. Bernard down the street who’s learned to stay compliantly well back from his Invisible Fence.

Now what's happening to Ms. Dixon here parallels closely what we see happening all too often in those rare instance when Islam is criticized. (In fact, I’ve long believed that Islamic activists are students of the gay rights movement in particular, which has been many times more successful in enforcing thought control than any other victims’ rights groups.) We've seen that, even when Islam is reasonably and respectfully criticized, swiftly fly the cries of “Islamophobia,” attended by implacable demands for termination, or some other form of purge. Just so, in the UT case, it's reported that at least one group “that petitions for gay rights in [the Toledo] area, equated Dixon's column with a ‘homophobic rant’ and supported the university's decision to let her go.” (“Sticks and stones”).

What drove President Jacobs to unlawfully fire his human resource administrator was no doubt the greater terror of the activists whom he knew would come a-marching on his office armed with ID tags to plaster on him, scrawled with nasty names all ending in “-ist” or “-phobia.”

Any self-respecting university president (or is it “lack of self-respecting university president”?), will instinctively choose the low-risk penalties of dodging a lazy PC press, or defending a slow, uninteresting lawsuit, over having to have CAIR, or the Triangle Foundation, or the National Action Network on his campus with their megaphones and death masks.