In March, Republican Gov. Nathan Deal was threatened by Marvel and Disney that they would pull productions from Georgia if he didn't veto a religious liberty bill they interpreted as discriminatory. He caved to the demands,  putting big money over the constitutional rights of his own citizens instead of protecting members of the faith community from being forced to compromise their beliefs.

Now another story out of the Peach State emerges, further proving the state has set a dangerous precedence.

A black physician and former director of public health in the city of Pasadena, California, Dr. Eric Walsh, was hired to be a district health director in Georgia but was fired a short time later after department officials caught wind that Walsh delivered (gulp!) biblical sermons on his own time and ordered employees to listen through the messages and report back on what they heard.

Walsh, a devout Seventh-day Adventist, preached on topics such as evolution, Islam, sexuality, and the damaging influence of pop culture. Apparently doing this in his spare time disqualifies the highly-qualified doctor from fulfilling his duties as a public health director. 

But it was something else from Walsh's past that caught the attention of his new employers, as well. A commencement speech he was chosen to deliver to graduates at  Pasadena City College was protested by student activists because of his beliefs and so he was forced to cancel. As David French at National Review explained:

"To these activists, working for former president Bush and President Obama to combat AIDS, serving as a board member of the Latino Health Collaborative, and starting California’s first city-run dental clinic for low-income families dealing with HIV/AIDS wasn’t sufficient to overcome the horror at Walsh’s Christian views.

Amazingly enough, the city also put Walsh on administration leave because of it. Meanwhile, the school secured someone more palatable for the college's progressive audience: a homosexual screenwriter.

French also commented on just how Nathan Deal's Georgia is doing business at this point:

"The Left used to say that it wasn’t concerned with Christian speech in houses of worship. Instead, it was only focused on 'ending discrimination.' But now the Left is the discriminator, seeking to purge vocal Christians from public life. Now, even sermons are not safe from government scrutiny, and a man who’s never been accused of workplace discrimination finds himself unable to find a job in the public-health sector."

A lawsuit has been filed on behalf of Dr. Walsh by the First Liberty Institute against Georgia's Department of Public Health. It alleges that the health department's own lawyer warned officials (twice, even) that the doctor's faith couldn't be a factor in the decision to fire him. But instead of owning up to their abuse of the law, the health department is claiming that it was extra income from Walsh's California past that he failed to disclose during the hiring process that is the problem. However, Walsh maintains that subject  never came up in the interviews.

Perhaps its time to remove the words included on Georgia's state flag: Constitution, justice, wisdom, and moderation. The state is failing on all counts.