Crystal Dixon, formerly employed at the University of Toledo, was fired “after she wrote a personal letter to the editor of a local newspaper objecting to the characterization of homosexuality as being the same as race.” I thought our nation’s universities were bastions of diversity. They are not. They are cesspools of forced conformity to a radically liberal moral, social, cultural, and political agenda.
Comparing a person’s race to where a man sticks his penis is an insult of the highest order to those who struggle every day with how people evaluate them because of what they see.
“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,” she wrote. “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 evidenced by the growing population of PFOX (Parents and Friends of Ex Gays) and Exodus International just to name a few.”
Homosexual sex is what a person does.
If you saw a picture do 20 people all dressed the same, could you point out who engaged in homosexual, bisexual, polygamous, or adulterous sexual activities? You couldn’t because all of these are behaviors.
If I showed you a picture of 20 people, could you pick out the people who are black? Most likely you could. Why? Because being black is not a behavior. Being black is in the skin.
Christians see homosexual behavior to be the issue. Sexual behavior cannot be compared to the struggle of blacks to secure full civil rights. General Colin Powell, in a 1992 letter to former congressional representative Patricia Schroeder, made this important point:
“Skin color is a benign, nonbehavioral characteristic. Sexual orientation is perhaps the most profound of human behavioral characteristics. Comparison of the two is a convenient but invalid argument." ((Cited in John W. Whitehead, Religious Apartheid: The Separation of Religion from American Public Life (Chicago, IL: Moody Press, 1994), 126. Powell has since come out in support of ‘gay’ marriage.))
The legal team at the American Freedom Law Center said the following in its rehearing request for Ms. Dixon:
“Dixon was fired from her employment as associate vice president for human resources with the University of Toledo because she expressed her personal, Christian views as a private citizen in an opinion piece published in the Toledo Free Press. Plaintiff did not occupy a political position nor did she publicly criticize any identified policy of her employer in her writing. Rather, plaintiff was fired for expressing her personal religious beliefs in a local newspaper on a very controversial issue: gay rights.”
Since the University of Toledo is a government-funded school and not a private non-tax-payer funded educational institution, speech and text (press), even unpopular speech and text by liberal standards, is protected under the First Amendment that guarantees “the freedom of speech” and “of the press.” Not the guarantee of some speech, but of all speech.
The First Amendment was put into the Constitution for comments like those of Ms. Dixon. Challenging the status quo, the powers that be, is an inherent American tradition protected by the Constitution.