EDITORIAL: Assistant attorney general must be removed from office for bigoted campaign against gay University of Michigan student
Andrew Shirvell should be removed as Michigan’s assistant attorney general since running a smear campaign in his free time against an openly gay student leader at the University of Michigan.
Although Shirvell has the right to free speech as a private citizen, the unbridled bigotry of his actions toward Christopher Armstrong, president of the Michigan Student Assembly, qualify as “conduct unbecoming of a state official.”
Shirvell has operated a blog accusing Armstrong of abusing his elected student government position to proliferate a radical homosexual agenda. The situation has been seeing national attention since being featured on the CNN program “Anderson Cooper 360,” where Cooper interviewed Shirvell.
“That’s exactly what most affluent, white homosexual males — like him — are: racist and elitist to the core,” Shirvell said on the blog.
Also on the blog, Shirvell calls Armstrong “A Nazi-like recruiter for the cult that is homosexuality,” and went on the record during the Cooper interview, confirming he believes Armstrong to be “Satan’s representative on the student assembly.”
Shirvell has taken multiple trips to Ann Arbor to picket and protest Armstrong, including picketing outside Armstrong’s home.
At no point during his interview with Cooper, anywhere on his blog or anywhere else has Shirvell ever suggested any reason for his campaign against Armstrong unrelated to or more specific than the fact that Armstrong is homosexual. This is plain-faced bigotry.
Although Shirvell is doing this on his off-time and attempting to keep his anti-gay agenda separate from his duties as assistant attorney general, the outright bigotry and media attention of this case necessitate that Attorney General Mike Cox wash his hands of his underling.
Cox, the first Republican attorney general in Michigan since Frank Millard in 1954, is understandably hesitant to publicly denounce or fire Shirvell.
However, Cox needs to weigh the consequences of angering hard-line conservatives and family rights activists with the consequences of allowing a homophobic bigot to continue to serve the citizens of Michigan in a capacity that requires him to be unbiased and treat every person he represents equally.
Even Gov. Jennifer Granholm used Twitter to say Shirvell would already be fired.
Not only is Shirvell making a bad name for himself by targeting an openly gay student on no grounds beyond the perceived evils of homosexuality, but he is an embarrassment and a burden for the state government he serves, and should be removed from it.
Update: AnnArbor.com reported Friday morning that Shirvell "has taken a voluntary leave of absence" from his position as assistant attorney general.
