Dr. Gonzalez now has an observatory he can work with at Grove City.
He has close to 70 peer reviewed papers on astronomy published at various scientific journals. NONE of these professional work even mentions God at all (they would not have been published otherwise).
It was his extra-curricular work — THE PRIVILEGED PLANET that put him on the “target” list IMHO.
In a way you are correct. The problem was that he took a couple years to write The Privileged Planet, and during that time his scientific output dropped like a rock. Unfortunately for him, that was the period leading up to the tenure decision. Those deciding tenure got to see a pattern of diminishing scientific output from what appeared to be a once-promising scientist. Also hurting was his relative lack of ability to get research grants, him achieving $22,000 vs. the 1.3 million average for someone seeking tenure. He also had a lack of successful supervision of graduate students, only one completing his dissertation in seven years.
Basically, he blew all his time on ID and severely neglected his academic duties. It's no wonder he was denied tenure.