It took two months of interviews for John Murphy, a former Philadelphia resident, to earn a job offer as the executive director of an assisted-living facility in Virginia; but only eight days and a “brutal” conversation with the local Catholic diocese to lose it.
The trouble started when Murphy, 64, filed his benefits paperwork and listed Jerry Carter, 67, as his spouse. The couple met more than 30 years ago and married legally in Connecticut in 2007.
On April 1, two representatives of Bishop Francis X. DiLorenzo, head of the Catholic Diocese of Richmond, visited Murphy’s office. Because Murphy had gone through the interview process for Saint Francis Home with the board of directors and had not interacted with the diocese, he assumed it was a welcoming committee.
DiLorenzo grew up in Philadelphia and trained at St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in Lower Merion Township before serving as Auxiliary Bishop of Scranton, Murphy’s hometown. Murphy thought they would have a good connection.
“With absolutely brutal precision — no preliminaries, no expression of ‘sorry to have to do this’ — they sat down and said, ‘This is antithetical to Church teaching and renders you unfit and unsuitable to serve as executive director of Saint Francis Home,’” Murphy recalled in a conversation with PGN this week.
“I was completed bowled over,” he said. “I didn’t really experience discrimination in such a blatant and harsh way until then. I was literally rendered speechless. I finally said, ‘I find this hard to believe.’ They simply kept reiterating.”
One of the representatives passed three old press releases across the table to Murphy. They publicized DiLorenzo’s negative reaction to the Supreme Court ruling that struck down the Defense of Marriage Act.
“I really do not see how this has any bearing on my qualifications for the position,” Murphy said he remembered telling the representatives.
Murphy spent most of his career in nonprofit administration for secular institutions. He expected to work at Saint Francis Home until he retired.
Instead, Murphy found himself with a lawyer, H. Aubrey Ford III, filing a discrimination claim in September against the Catholic Diocese of Richmond with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
The EEOC ruled in July that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act prohibits employment discrimination based on sexual orientation as an extension of the prohibition of sex-based discrimination. The act also prohibits employment discrimination based on race and religion.
“That will be a persuasive authority, but it is not controlling,” said Ford, Murphy’s lawyer.
The Catholic Diocese of Richmond owns Saint Francis Home, and lay administrators run it.
A nonprofit called the Saint Francis Home of Richmond Foundation supports the home. Its lay board hired Murphy. The foundation has about $350,000 in revenue, according to the most recent tax filing from 2014; about $73,000 comes from fundraising events, $54,000 from investments and $221,000 from contributions and grants.
Murphy said residents typically turned over to the home their Social Security, disability or Medicaid payments in exchange for room and board. The foundation raised money to cover any expenses that were left after residents’ contributions. If fundraising fell short of the amount needed for the remaining expenses, the diocese would contribute money, Murphy said.
Diana Sims Snider, a spokeswoman for the Catholic Diocese of Richmond, told the Associated Press the diocese doesn’t fund the home’s yearly operating expenses. It allows lay administrators from the home to solicit funds from its parishioners.
Snider sent a statement to PGN indicating she could not comment on personnel matters, but added the diocese sees Murphy’s case as a First Amendment issue.
“As a Catholic organization, we expect the employees of the diocese and its ministries to uphold and embody the consistent values and truths of the Catholic faith,” Snider said in the statement, “including those preserving the sanctity of marriage.”
Ford said there is a ministerial exemption that typically gives a religious organization discretion in matters of hiring or firing ministers of the religion.
“The big issue, of course, becomes, what exactly is ministerial,” he said, noting that Murphy’s duties were secular.
The EEOC has assigned an investigator for the discrimination claim. Ford said the commission typically has about six months to respond.
He said Murphy’s case is unusual because both sides agree on the reason for Murphy’s termination: his marriage to a man.
“It seemed to me this was just an act of injustice,” Ford said. “The reaction of the board of directors is even a reflection of that.”
After DiLorenzo’s representatives terminated his employment, Murphy said he found out that the bishop had first asked the board to fire him, but the members unanimously refused. Sam Dibert Sr., vice president of the board, resigned over the issue.
Murphy said he asked early-on if his marriage would be a problem for his job, and the board president, Tina Neal, shrugged and said, “It’s 2015.”
Murphy didn’t think twice about adding Carter to his benefits paperwork and set about the managerial duties of his new job. He met with residents and staff and instituted an open-door policy that yielded several productive conversations about a new direction for the home, he said.
Murphy, who was raised Catholic, said losing his job has shaken his faith.
“It’s a drip-drip-drip kind of thing,” he said. “You hear from the pulpit that you’re not a fit person, even though you know you’re a good person. You know, I’m not a masochist. The times I want to get beaten up are fewer and fewer.”
Murphy and Carter fell in love over a mutual desire to help others. They met at a party in 1985 in New York City. Murphy was in town on business and Carter was working as a clinical social worker in the bone marrow transplant unit of a local hospital.
Later, when the couple moved in together in Rittenhouse Square, they started attending Mass. They purchased signet rings and asked their priest to bless them and their union, which he did. Murphy remembered a nun who told him, “God doesn’t care who we love, just that we love.”
Murphy said he hopes more people will come to see how wrong it is for someone to lose his or her job because of being gay. He noted his case parallels that of Margie Winters, who was fired in June as a Catholic educator from Waldron Mercy Academy in Lower Merion because of her marriage to a woman.
“I hope more people like me will be emboldened to speak up about the unfairness and illegality of this,” he said, “and that it will have a ripple effect to eliminate all kinds of discrimination against LGBT people.”