At the University of Toledo in Ohio, administrators apparently made the mistake of hiring a bigot to administer university hiring policies which forbid discrimination on the basis of race, religion and sexual orientation.
In an April 18 article in the Toledo Free Press, Crystal Davis Dixon, associate vice president for human resources for the university, declared her support for discrimination on all three counts:
- she was willing to enforce her own antigay religious views upon university employees and students possessing less-homophobic, more-genuine religious beliefs,
- despite university hiring policies to the contrary, she denied that gay people have civil rights or that discrimination victimizes them, and
- she implicitly denigrated gay African-Americans.
Dixon also denied the natural existence of intersexed and gender-variant people who might apply for jobs at the university — and threatened God’s wrath against such people:
She concluded: “My final and most important point. There is a divine order. God created human kind male and female (Genesis 1:27). God created humans with an inalienable right to choose. There are consequences for each of our choices, including those who violate God’s divine order.
Dixon was fired for flouting the policies that she was hired to enforce, and religious-right media have been in an uproar ever since — accusing the university of discriminating racially and religiously against Dixon because it would not permit her to deny religious freedom to others, nor to arbitrarily violate campus hiring and employment policies with impunity.
Two ex-gay activists have now leapt to Dixon’ defense with a bizarre assertion that antigay African-Americans somehow enjoy a special racial and religious right to discriminate against others on the basis of victims’ religion and sexual orientation, whatever local laws and employer hiring policies may say to the contrary.
With amazing chutzpah, Dixon said that her race gave her the special right to deny others their own rights under civil law and university policy — and she cited non-existent “daily thousands” of ex-gays who leave a non-existent “gay lifestyle” as justification for her denial of equality to fellow Americans:
Dixon said she took “great umbrage at the notion that those choosing the homosexual lifestyle are ‘civil rights victims.'”
“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.”
Dixon referenced “ex-gay” individuals, many of whom, she said, “report that the impetus to their change of heart and lifestyle was a transformative experience with God; a realization that their choice of same-sex practices wreaked havoc in their psychological and physical lives.”
In a press release issued this morning, the antigay group Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays made the same argument: That race somehow gives a human-resources administrator a special right to discriminate against others with impunity:
“African-Americans like Dixon have the right to defend their race without being subjected to punishment,” said Regina Griggs, Executive Director of PFOX.
Speaking earlier in defense of Dixon, Ohio “ex-gay” activist Greg Quinlan (pictured, right) charged that anyone who denies ex-gay and antigay activists the special right to violate workplace policies, to discriminate at will, to impose religious beliefs upon subordinates, and to state unscientific falsehoods about sexual orientation without opposition, is guilty of hating and silencing ex-gays:
“Today, if you speak out against homosexuality on a college campus, you are considered a criminal,” Quinlan told Cybercast News Service . “I’ve been out of the homosexual lifestyle for 16 years. And if you speak out as an ex-gay, you are always under attack. I’ve been slapped in the face. I’ve been screamed and yelled at. I’ve been called all kinds of names. When you disagree with someone, that doesn’t mean you hate them.”
Quinlan, a former homosexual activist who said he had raised “thousands of dollars” for the Human Rights Campaign Fund in the 1980s, said his own conversion came about slowly.
“The science is clear, absolutely clear: no one is born a homosexual. It is nurture, not nature,” he said. “But if you say that, you are branded a bigot, you’re branded as a monster, you’re branded as a hater. You are branded as intolerant. But you are also, on many campuses, treated as if you have no right to your opinions.”
In Florida, expect a similar battle to erupt after a judge ruled, in response to students’ lawsuit, that it is constitutionally forbidden for a public high school principal or school board to selectively ban all gay-tolerant or gay-affirming speech.
Far from apologizing for their un-American activities, ACLU legal documents indicate that the principal and school board planned to retaliate against the suing students until the judge warned them not to.
No doubt, religious rightists will again shout to the mass media that they are being denied their religious “freedom” to deny constitutional rights to others — including free speech and the expression of gay-tolerant and gay-affirming religious beliefs.
Hat tip: Box Turtle Bulletin
