As an incident in Toledo, Ohio unfolds, it seems that civil rights may not be as secure as most Americans think.
Crystal Dixon, the associate vice president of human resources at the University of Toledo (UT), boldly countered a column published in the local Toledo Free Press called “Gay Rights and Wrongs,” which compared the struggles of homosexuals to the struggles of black or handicapped Americans. Dixon took offense at the article and drafted a response, which was later published.
In it, she writes, “As a Black woman who happens to be an alumnus of the University of Toledo’s Graduate School, an employee and business owner, 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.”
Her comments, which were published as a private citizen without reference to her UT employer, so enraged college officials that she was suspended from her job and subjected to public humiliation by UT President Lloyd Jacobs. In a Free Press follow-up article, Jacobs said that the university will take “internal actions” to ensure that his staff “”fully aligns [its] utterances and actions with [the school’s] values system.” In one fell swoop, Jacobs was informing the world not only that the University of Toledo denies its employees a private right of speech but that an African American employee has no right to assert her opinion regarding her own civil rights heritage.
These days, it takes tremendous courage to fight for free speech in an educational system that only selectively tolerates the exchange of ideas. We applaud Dixon and urge you to protest the school’s intimidation by contacting President Lloyd Jacobs at (419) 530-2211 or by emailing UTPresident@utoledo.edu.
Tony Perkins is the president of the Family Research Council. This op-ed is excerpted from the FRC Action Update that he compiles.
