Watch: Texas Teacher Comes Out - Faces Firing Right Afterwards

A Texas high school teacher whose speech team took state and national honors last year was called in for questioning and asked to hand over his cell phone the day after he came out to students. The school district says his being gay has nothing to do with his being fired, and claims that the action is being taken due to violations of a policy around text messaging, the Dallas Forth Worth local NBC affiliate reports.

Dr. John Hamilton's regular job at the school was as a teacher of communications, but it was to his speech team that he came out - and he says he did so while giving them a pep talk intended to encourage them to focus on the team, rather than their personal issues.

Hamilton, 32, who the NBC affiliate says has suffered depression and PTSD, says that he told students on the team:

"I was like heck, you guys watched me struggle for years through my own mental health battles, because that what it was, and come out on the other side of that has a happy functioning gay man."

The next day he was put on administrative leave and asked to turn over his cell phone, which he did because, Hamilton said, "I have nothing to hide."

The Grapevine-Colleyville Independent School District disagrees, with a human resources employee for the school district saying in a meeting that "Dr. Hamilton violated the standards by developing inappropriate relationships with students, providing inappropriate information to the students concerning his personal life, through text messages, treating students as family members or close friends and providing inappropriate personal information to the students."

Hamilton's side of the story: He texted a student who was baby-sitting his son. Moreover, reported the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Hamilton noted that "If we're going to fire a teacher for texting a kid, we're going to fire a lot of teachers in Texas."

Hamilton told the media he thinks that parents must have heard about his referring to himself as a gay man in the presence of the students and complained. But he also said that students would have known about his family life because his son had accompanied the team on speech tournaments in the past.

School district spokesperson Kristin Snively said in a statement:

"To be clear, Mr. Hamilton's sexual orientation has absolutely nothing to do with the reason Mr. Hamilton has been proposed for termination.

"Mr. Hamilton has been proposed for termination for good cause due to violations of the District's electronic communications policy, violations of student privacy, failure to follow written directives, and violations of the Texas Educator's Code of Ethics."

The head of the district's human resources, Gema Padgett, said in a meeting that Hamilton had transgressed against a policy around electronic communication and also violated ethics provisions by "developing inappropriate relationships with students, providing inappropriate information to the students concerning his personal life through text messages, treating students as family members or close friends and providing inappropriate personal information to the students and developing inappropriate relationships or boundaries with the students."

Hamilton responded to that as follows:

"Sitting in the board room and hearing her use the word inappropriate, inappropriate, inappropriate painted me to the public as a child predator."

The board members of the school district approved his firing at the meeting, media sources said. Hamilton says he plans to appeal.

Watch the NBC news clip below.