At Dave Ramsey’s company, oral sex outside marriage wasn't a fireable offense, legal docs show
At Ramsey Solutions, where employees are expected to adhere to a "righteous living values” policy based on Judeo-Christian principles or face discipline, Evangelical CEO Dave Ramsey and his board did not treat one employee's oral sex outside marriage as a fireable offense because it didn’t qualify as “intercourse,” court documents show.
The recently released documents are part of a lawsuit against Ramsey Solutions filed by former administrative assistant Caitlin O'Connor who was terminated in June 2020 for having premarital sex which led to a pregnancy.
In a transcript of a video deposition conducted in November 2021, Ramsey told lawyers for O’Connor in defense of the righteous living policy at his company that: "If an employee is doing something that is contrary to standard Christian beliefs, normative Christian beliefs, then the people that we deal with in the Christian community would feel that we are hypocrites, and it would damage our brand."
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O’Connor’s attorney’s raised questions about how fairly Ramsey and other leaders at his company applied the righteous living policy in the case of Chris Hogan, a former Ramsey Solutions media personality who confessed that he engaged in extramarital oral sex with a married woman.
Hogan would later confess to more than just oral sex, which eventually led to the end of his relationship with Ramsey Solutions.
The Christian Post reached out to a spokesperson for Ramsey Solutions to ask if the righteous living values policy has been updated. A response is pending.
When asked why Hogan was not terminated at the time he confessed to having oral sex outside his marriage, Ramsey said the company defines sex as “intercourse” and the issue had never come up before.
Ramsey said Hogan’s case was also very difficult to review for the company’s leaders because they did not have much experience dealing with a case where an employee had confessed to just oral sex. Matters were complicated, Ramsey added, because "[Hogan], his wife, and his church elders actively deceived everyone in the company" and he wasn't sure what to believe when Hogan’s now ex-wife, Melissa Hogan, had accused him of adultery in a highly explosive manner.
“Her shouting and accusing him of this, trying to get him to own up to it. And he said he had taken comfort in this lady that was his [redacted] because they were both married to crazy people, according to him. And an emotional affair had developed. And that an oral sex act had begun but was not completed, according to him,” Ramsey said.
“She contends otherwise, but she was not there. His wife, now ex-wife,” Ramsey said. “The truth is, the whole thing is such a mess, it's hard to tell what was really going on. The people involved were so dramatic and out of control, there was no way to make a real judgment on what was happening. That's one of the reasons we didn't act on it, because we couldn't figure out what the real truth was.”
Ramsey noted that Hogan was also accused of previously being unfaithful to his wife and he owned up to it but they felt like they needed to apply grace to those allegations.
“He was accused of intercourse and admitted to that from before. And two new pieces of information there that we had never faced before. We had never faced the question of oral sex, and we had never faced the question of something being [redacted],” Ramsey explained.
“We decided that something that was [redacted] we were not going to hold against everyone. Because if everything gets hold against everybody for [redacted], we probably wouldn't have anything,” he said.
“And the oral sex was accused by his wife in a high-stress situation. He admitted it, but said it was not what it sounded like. And frankly, I didn't want all the details. So the conclusion was that they were going to try to work on it to save their marriage. So we didn't push it,” the Evangelical CEO added.
A trove of email evidence showed how, over time, Ramsey’s faith in Hogan unraveled as the company realized he was not truthful about the extent of his affairs.
“I’m afraid we are being played after we were warned that he is a world class liar and manipulator. Maybe he isn’t playing us an [redacted] is a world class b**** using her own kids as pawns, but before God we owe RS and ourselves the peace of pursuing truth. ... To ground,” Ramsey wrote in an email. “We owe God the diligence to steward a huge situation with wisdom and thoroughness. If it breaks that he has done some huge thing and it looks like we did not dig for truth, and checked boxes, we will not only lose [redacted], but will also have a legitimate PR problem of scale because we covered up a horrific act to line our own pocketbooks.”
Hogan, who was once seen as a successor to Ramsey, announced he was leaving the company on March 10, 2021.
Reacting to the revelations regarding how Ramsey Solutions implements its righteous living policy, Melissa Hogan, said she had always been truthful in the claims she made against her ex-husband to the company.
“I have consistently spoken the truth — to Ramsey Solutions, in my divorce proceedings in 2019, and since that time. Everything I’ve said has been established to be true,” she said in a recent statement on her website.
“The fact that Dave Ramsey himself and Ramsey Solutions as a company, in spite of evidence and witnesses, covered their eyes and ears and apparently chose to believe someone with a long established history of lying to them evidences a profound lack of wisdom and discernment — a disturbing fact considering they purport to lead over 1,000 people in my local Nashville community and even seek to export those practices to other companies,” she continued.
“There seems to be a pattern of Dave Ramsey believing abusive men with power who benefit him, whether it’s Mark Driscoll, Bill Hybels, or my ex-husband, and depicting women who allege misconduct as crazy and un-Christian. In my opinion, this is consistent with Dave’s own behavior so that does not surprise me. But what grieves me most is that he does it in the name of Jesus Christ.”
While engaging in oral sex outside of marriage isn't a fireable offense at Ramsey Solutions, many Christian leaders have said it's a sexual act that should be viewed as no less than intercourse.
"I think it is wrong outside marriage. … Oral sex is even more intimate and delicate, it seems, than copulation. And we know this because even married couples are wondering if they should go there. It is as if it is a stage of intimacy that may not even be proper for married people," Reformed theologian John Piper, chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary in Minneapolis, Minnesota, said during the 400th episode of "Ask Pastor John." "To think it can be an innocent substitute for copulation so people can obey the letter of the law outside marriage is a mirage."
