June 30, 2011 | Sex & Society

NASCAR tire changer loses job over anti-gay tweet

NASCAR won't tolerate bigotry in any form, something Jeremy Fuller found out the hard way.

Fuller was a tire changer for the Red Bull Racing NASCAR team. He lost his job after tweeting to a friend.

This past weekend, Fuller was in San Francisco. He took a picture of a Pride banner and wrote, "This is way [sic] I don't live here!" Someone tweeted back, "If we could get rid of them, it'd be a lot better." Fuller appeared to respond with "lol... Don't we all wish!"

Red Bull Racing wasted no time and fired Fuller, who denied sending the last message.

"It was a joke between two friends and it cost me both of my jobs," Fuller said, referring to his jobs with both Red Bull Racing and Turner Motorsports. "I'm not racist and I do not hate gay people. It wasn't intended to be what [it appeared]... I didn't write anything about getting rid of them or 'ha ha' or 'laughing out loud.'"

NASCAR's code of conduct expressly prohibits employees from making public statements against another person's race, religion, age, handicap, or sexual orientation.

Red Bull crewman fired for homophobic tweets [Scene Daily]