(CNSNews.com) - Cybercast News Service has learned that a University of Toledo administrator has lost her job because she wrote a newspaper commentary that questioned whether homosexuality is a civil rights issue.

Crystal Dixon, the associate vice president of human resources at the state university, had earlier been put on paid administrative leave for the Apr. 18 column published in the Toledo Free Press, as detailed in a previous CNSNews.com report.

"She has been fired," said Brian Rooney, spokesman for the Thomas More Law Center, an Ann Arbor, Mich.-based legal-defense group which is representing Dixon.

Rooney told Cybercast News Service that the university had offered Dixon "another position, in a different part of the university, not in human resources" because she had argued in her editorial that sexual orientation is not an immutable characteristic like race or sex and should not be afforded the same protection under civil rights laws.

"She said no, that's when she was fired," Rooney said. "We are going to do everything we can within the law to try to show that the firing was improper and potentially illegal."

Tobin Klinger, senior director of university communications at the university, confirmed that Dixon was no longer an employee, but said he "couldn't elaborate" on whether she was fired or for what reason. However, Klinger did say that a statement may be released later on the situation.

Earlier, a university spokesman had confirmed that Dixon had been placed on paid leave "for that column."

University of Toledo President Lloyd Jacobs wrote his own column a few days after Dixon's op-ed appeared -- one in which he condemned his former employee's comments.

Jacobs said Dixon's views "do not accord with the values of the University of Toledo." He also pledged that the university would be "taking action to align its policies" with its own value system.

Attorneys with the Thomas More Law Center, meanwhile, point out that Dixon, an African-American woman and evangelical Christian, was not speaking on behalf of the university, but -- as Dixon herself phrased it in the column -- "as a Black woman who happens to be an alumnus of the University of Toledo's Graduate School, an employee and a business owner."

"She was speaking as a private citizen when she wrote her column and, clearly, our Constitution protects speech, and there shouldn't be a consequence to that free speech as far as discriminating against somebody based on their speech and the content of that speech," Rooney told Cybercast News Service on Monday.

Matt Barber, policy director for cultural issues at Concerned Women for America, said the action apparently taken by the University of Toledo was "an egregious violation."

"I think the University of Toledo has really betrayed their anti-Christian bigotry and intolerance," Barber told Cybercast News Service . "Just because many Christians have a viewpoint that is unpopular in leftist circles, does not mean those leftists have a right to violate the law and discriminate against Christians."

Rooney said legal action is anticipated, but its precise form has not been determined.

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