RIVERDALE, Iowa (LifeSiteNews) — An Iowa man is suing his employer for religious discrimination after he was fired for stating that the homosexual “pride” flag is “an abomination to God.”
Daniel Snyder, 63, a devout Christian, was suspended and then terminated after he posted what he thought was an anonymous survey response to the industrial engineering company he worked for as “lead operator,” Arconic.
“It’s an abomination to God. Rainbow is not meant to be displayed as a sign for sexual gender,” Synder wrote in reference to the LGBT “pride” flag displayed on the webpage he was routed to after clicking a company email link. He says he thought the rainbow flag was a part of the survey and that his employer was seeking his feedback on the subject.
Synder later discovered that his comment was not an anonymous submission to Arconic but had been posted to the company’s public message board where it was seen by other employees. Arconic informed him that it had offended at least one employee, and went on to fire him for making an “offensive comment” in violation of the company’s “diversity policy.”
According to his lawsuit, prior to his termination, Snyder told Arconic the statement was “based on his sincerely held Christian beliefs.” He alleges that when he told Arconic representatives that he thought he had been responding to an anonymous survey, “he was met with derisive laughter.”
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As his lawsuit states, Synder, who was granted a religious accommodation by Arconic to take Sundays off from work in order to preach at a local church, “sincerely believes that the Bible shows that the rainbow is a sign of the covenant between God and man, and thus that it is sacrilegious to use the rainbow to promote relationships and ideologies that violate God’s law.”
The lawsuit continues, observing that Arconic’s “diversity” policy “actually punishes diversity of opinion, allowing only one opinion — the company’s approved narrative on morally freighted issues — while treating any employee’s religious opinion or objection to the contrary, even if intended to be anonymous and expressed in a single instance, as grounds for immediate termination with no accommodation whatsoever. The ‘zero tolerance diversity policy’ is, in fact, an intolerance policy designed to expel from Arconic’s workforce anyone who dissents for religious reasons from its corporate moral views.”
“Ironically, it is Arconic that is refusing to respect the diversity of Mr. Snyder’s beliefs or to acknowledge that he was offended by the company’s choice to coopt the rainbow to promote same-sex marriage and gender ideology,” commented Michael McHale, counsel at the Thomas More Society, which is representing Snyder.
“Arconic, in its attempt to force Mr. Synder to eschew his deeply and sincerely held religious beliefs, without attempting to reasonably accommodate him, has violated a very basic tenet of both federal and state anti-discrimination law,” continued McHale in his statement.
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The lawsuit notes that even the Supreme Court decision that upheld a “right” to so-called same-sex “marriage,” Obergefell v. Hodges, held that “those who adhere to religious doctrines[] may continue to advocate with utmost, sincere conviction that, by divine precepts, same-sex marriage should not be condoned.”
Snyder is seeking damages for alleged retaliation, religious discrimination, and violations of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which, according to Title VII, “requires otherwise neutral policies” like Arconic’s diversity policy “to give way to the need for accommodation” if feasible “without an undue hardship,” according to the lawsuit.