A blogger employed by a Utah school says he was fired for writing about “homophones” because his boss thought it would associate the school with homosexuality.

“This blog about homophones was the last straw,” Tim Torkildson’s boss told him, according to a post in his personal blog. “Now our school is going to be associated with homosexuality.”


Homophones are words that sound the same, but have different meanings for each different spelling — and have absolutely nothing to do with homosexuality.

But Torkildson’s boss allegedly told him that using the word was still “extremely inappropriate” because it was too “advanced” and people wouldn’t know what it meant.

“I had to look up the word, because I didn’t know what the hell you were talking about,” said Clarke Woodger, owner of the Provo’s Nomen Global Language Center, according to Torkildson.

Torkildson had been working as the center’s social-media specialist for three months, and posted the piece on the school’s official blog. He said he posted the entry on July 11, and was fired a week later.