A former Texas fire chaplain who was fired from his volunteer position in December after he wrote blog post critical of biological men competing against women in sports told Fox News the U.S. has “drastically changed” since he moved to the country more than two decades ago.
Andrew Fox, who is suing the Austin Fire Department, accusing the department of violating his First Amendment rights, told Tucker Carlson on Thursday that one of the primary attractions of moving to the U.S. from the United Kingdom in 1999 was the First Amendment protections that allow people to “speak and articulate your thoughts, your concepts, your ideas, religious freedom,” without the threat of government reprisal.
“But the country I moved to 23 years ago is not the country that I’m living in right now,” Fox told Carlson. “So, in that time that I’ve lived here, becoming a citizen, it has drastically changed, and that is very surprising to me as a chaplain serving those that serve their community.”
National Review wrote about Fox’s case in mid-August, after Alliance Defending Freedom filed a lawsuit on his behalf against the fire department. Fox, a protestant minister and chaplain, helped launch the Austin Fire Department’s volunteer chaplain program about nine years ago, and headed the program until he was relieved of his duties in December.
Last summer, department leaders told Fox they had received complaints from LGBTQ members about some of his blog posts, including a series of posts addressing the “woke uprising,” identity politics, social justice, and transgender athletes.
“I argued that someone born a man transitioning to be a woman competing against women in athletics is an attack, it is an affront to women,” Fox told Carlson. “I argued that intelligently, but also Biblically, being a Christian man myself.”
Fox said the chief and assistant chief initially told him, “they were not there to censor me, and they did not want me to stop writing my blog.” But they did, eventually, ask Fox to write an official apology letter to LGBTQ members of the department. The letter he wrote was deemed too long, and did not include an explicit apology for expressing his views. Fox said he refused to recant his views, and was then dismissed from the chaplain program
“You didn’t lick the boots of the trans lobby,” said Carlson, adding that Fox’s view on transgender athletes competing against women is “the majority view in the United States,” and “most people agree with you.”
“Social agendas should never trump America’s civil rights under the U.S. Constitution, and Americans should never be forced to apologize and recant for stating those beliefs in public,” ADF lawyer Ryan Bangert said. “And that is exactly what the city of Austin demanded of Dr. Fox, and that clearly violates the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the Texas Constitution.”