Christian man fired after gay rights group contacts his employer to complain

Story from the magazine Down East.

Excerpt:

Larry Grard admits he had “a lapse in judgment.” But Grard – who’s been a reporter for thirty-five years, the last eighteen of them at the Morning Sentinel in Waterville – says the e-mail he sent from his personal account to a national gay rights group shouldn’t have been grounds for his dismissal.

Grard was fired by Bill Thompson, editor of the Sentinel and its sister paper the Kennebec Journal in Augusta, shortly after the Nov. 3 election in which Maine voters repealed a same-sex marriage law approved by the Legislature. Grard said he arrived at work the morning after the vote to find an e-mailed press release from the Human Rights Campaign in Washington, D.C., that blamed the outcome of the balloting on hatred of gays.

Grard, who said he’d gotten no sleep the night before, used his own e-mail to send a response. “They said the Yes-on-1 people were haters. I’m a Christian. I take offense at that,” he said. “I e-mailed them back and said basically, ‘We’re not the ones doing the hating. You’re the ones doing the hating.’

“I sent the same message in his face he sent in mine.”

Grard thought his response was anonymous, but it turned out to be anything but. One week later, he was summoned to Thompson’s office. He was told that Trevor Thomas, deputy communications director of the Human Rights Campaign, had Googled his name, discovered he was a reporter, and was demanding Grard be fired. According to Grard, Thompson said, “There’s no wiggle room.”

He was immediately dismissed.

[...]The week after Grard was fired, he said, his wife, Lisa, who wrote a biweekly food column for the Sentinel as a freelancer, received an e-mail informing her that her work would no longer be needed.

Comments to this post will be strictly moderated in light of Obama’s signing of the hate crimes bill.

Related stories

Here are some stories from the UK:

• Woman gets police visit after writing letter protesting gay pride parade
• Another nurse faces termination for being a Christian in public
• UK stewardess fired for refusing to dress as a Muslim
• Couple arrested for answering Muslim’s questions about Christianity

Here are some stories from Canada:

• The persecution of a Catholic Bishop (at Blazing Cat Fur)
• The persecution of Rev. Stephen Boissoin (at Ezra Levant)
• The persecution of Catholic Insight magazine (at Ezra Levant)
• The persecution of Christian businessman Scott Brockie (at The Interim)

And in the United States:

• Feminists suppress free speech at East Georgia College
• ACLU instigates arrest of two Christians for praying in a church
• New Mexico Human Rights Commissions fines couple $6000 for being Christians
• Obama forces Catholic school to cover abortion on health care plan

Filed under: News, Censorship, Christian, Christianity, Disagreement, Diversity, Firing, Free Speech, Freedom of Religion, Freedom of Religious Expression, Gay Lobby, GLBT, Human Rights, Human Rights Campaign, Intolerance, LGBT, Political Correctness, Religious Freedom, Religious Liberty, Termination