A senior lawyer faces “immediate and severe” action from his Virginia law firm after sending out a company-wide email attacking same-sex marriage and calling AIDS the “gay plague.”

“The email infuriated me,” Ken Direktor, a member of Becker & Poliakoff’s management committee, said to the Daily Business Review. “I’ve been here 28 years, and we promote and support a work environment that’s diverse and collegial. An email as divisive as this runs directly contrary to the core values of the firm.”

ADVERTISEMENT

Walter Kubitz was upset that a federal judge in Florida had struck down the state’s same-sex marriage ban as unconstitutional. U.S. District Judge Robert L. Hinkle ruled in August that Florida’s same-sex marriage ban violated equal protection and due process protections of the Constitution.

“Judge Hinkle says that the Florida ban on same-sex marriage violates the 14th Amendment Due Process and Equal Protection clauses. However, there is not a shred of historical evidence that either of those clauses was ever intended to legitimize homosexuality,” he wrote in the email.

Kubitz accused Hinkle and other judges who have ruled against same-sex marriage bans of amending the Constitution “by judicial fiat.” He said the Tenth Amendment gave states the right to impose their own marriage laws without federal interference.

“Adding insult to injury, Judge Hinkle invokes our founding fathers as though they would have approved of his ruling. Not so. In his 1796 farewell address then-president George Washington spoke of morality as being indispensable to our societal well-being,” he continued.

“Today’s reckless trashing of morality has been damaging on many fronts. For one, there has been a significant increase in sexually transmitted disease over the past few decades, with the gay plague of AIDS being a classic example.”

ADVERTISEMENT

Kubitz concluded his email, which was first published by Above the Law, by stating that homosexuality is condemned by the Bible.

[Young woman with computer via Shutterstock]