The euphoria of marriage equality becoming the law of the land quickly subsided this week, tempered by the reality that LGBT acceptance is nowhere near as universal as our marriage laws now are.
News broke this week that a local archdiocesan elementary school fired a religion teacher because she is married to a woman. While Pennsylvania lacks an employment-discrimination law that protects LGBT workers, the chances are that even such a measure couldn’t have protected the teacher, as the school would likely claim the religious exemption that exists in most nondiscrimination laws.
Supporters of the decision have argued that the school was within its rights as a religious institution to terminate an employee who didn’t comply with its “Catholic identity.” However, the circumstances of the firing suggest the influence of bureaucracy — an ongoing trend that continues to distance the Catholic Church from its constituents and from the reality of 2015.
School officials knew about the teacher’s sexual orientation and her wife upon her hiring and instated a “don’t ask, don’t tell”-type policy. While that is a short-sighted approach, the teacher, by all accounts, complied. However, when one or two parents learned of the woman’s marriage, the school responded by firing her.
Immediately, eight years that the woman invested at the school, in her students, were flushed away — while the women’s tenure suggested that her sexual orientation had no impact on her service, school officials seemingly prioritized negative repercussions from the archdiocese over reality. While on paper the school may have been within its rights to terminate the woman, the officials’ willingness to turn their backs on a teacher they had previously supported is cowardly. And it’s not only damaging for the teacher and her family, but suggests to students, parents and other school employees that convictions should be compromised.
This incident is another regrettable example of a Catholic institution missing the opportunity to progress; this could have been a powerful learning moment but instead is another stain on a community that has had too many in recent years. And — if the teacher receives the support that so many others in her position have — it will again illustrate how far out of touch the Catholic hierarchy is with the views of its followers, who it can no longer continue to afford to ignore.