English Language School Teacher Fired Over Blog About Homophones Because His Boss Thinks Homophones Are Totally Gay

This guy's language school blog
post about homophones got him fired. 

The English language can be tricky for those trying to learn it.  

There was a guy named Tim Torkildson at the Nomen Global Language Center who wrote a helpful blog post about homophones, which are words that sound the same but have completely different meanings.

Think "peal" and "peel" or "flour" and "flower."

Here's the "problem": The word "homophone" has "homo" in it. Torkildson's boss, Clarke Woodger, fired him, because the subject of homophones is just so gay.

Paul Rolly, writing in the Salt Lake Tribune, reported that Woodger complained that because of the blog, "now our school is going to be associated with homosexuality."

Actually, it wouldn't have, had Woodger not been so homophobic that any word with the word "homo" in it is totally gay.  

Um, can you have words that have a same-sex attraction toward each other?  

As Rolly reports:  "(Torkildson) knew the 'homo' part of the word could be politically charged, but he thought the explanation of that quirky part of the English language would be educational."

Boy, was it ever! I had no idea I should avoid words with the word "homo" in it, like "homosapien" or "homogenize" because they're so gay.

Torkildson said he wanted to teach the concept of homophones because such words are confusing to someone whose native language doesn't have that feature, Rolly reports.

However, Woodger said that most of his language school's students are at a basic level of English proficiency and are not ready to learn complex concepts like homophones.

This whole thing could get worse, though, if you consider another word for homophone is homonym.

Yep, as I said, the English language is just so queer.