06242016Fri
Last updateFri, 17 Jun 2016 12pm

Officials dismissed for homophobic comments after Orlando

Senior officials with the Zapopan municipal government and a state government agency have both been dismissed from their jobs after posting homophobic comments on social media in the wake of last weekend’s massacre at a gay night club in Orlando.

In a post on his Twitter account, José de Jesús Manzo Corona, the coordinator of Jalisco’s Social Integration Ministry (Secretaría de Desarrollo e Integración Social or SEDIS), wrote that it was a “shame” that only 50, not 100, people died in the attack.

The comment sparked immediate condemnation, with SEDIS chief Miguel Castro Reynoso calling a press conference the next day to announce that Manzo Corona had been removed from his position.  “We offer our apologies. His comment has nothing to do with the government of Jalisco,” he stressed.  

Jalisco Governor Aristoteles Sandoval later tweeted that “discrimination will not be tolerated under any circumstance.”

Meanwhile, Jorge Contreras, the legal representative for Human Rights and Transparency at the Zapopan Municipal Employees Union was also removed from his job after his Facebook post in English: “Those gays received their punishment thank God!’’ 

Said Zapopan Mayor Pablo Lemus: “We are not going to tolerate acts of discrimination, and much less after the kind of tragedy that occurred in Orlando this weekend.”

According to one report, Contreras will now lose a salary of around 30,000 pesos a month.

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