Federal Appeals Court Upholds Firing Of Anti-Gay College HR Director

The Sixth Federal Court of Appeals has upheld the firing of former University of Toledo human resources director Crystal Dixon, who was canned in 2008 after a local newspaper published her op-ed column in which she denounced LGBT rights and promoted the "ex-gay" movement.

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.

Since her termination, Dixon has become a martyr to the anti-gay movement, who will now doubtlessly resume listing her case among their examples of homofascism.