The Gay-Rights Revolution in America's Churches The Atlantic For most gay Americans in the 20th century, the church was a place of pain. It cast them out and called them evil. It cleaved them from their families. It condemned their love and denied their souls. In 2004, a president was elected when religious ... |
SouthFloridaGayNews.com | Evangelical 'Messy Middle' is more accepting of gays The State The study, “How the Messy Middle Finds a Voice: Evangelicals and Structured Ambivalence towards Gays and Lesbians,†analyzed national data from the 2010 Baylor Religion Survey, conducted by Gallup. Researchers presented their study at the annual ... New Study Shows Evangelicals Now More Supportive of Gays |
The State | Religion news in brief...Ex-gay gospel singer Donnie McClurkin doesn't play ... New Pittsburgh Courier WASHINGTON (AP) - A gospel singer who says God delivered him from being gay did not perform at a concert at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in Washington after gay rights activists complained. The Washington Post reports that singer and pastor ... Lutherans elect Elizabeth Eaton first female presiding bishop of ELCA ELCA elects first female presiding bishop Largest Lutheran group elects 1st female leader |
Support grows for fired gay Catholic schoolteacher Religion News Service And in January, Nicholas Coppola was stripped of his volunteer posts as a religious education teacher, lector and visitation minister at St. Anthony's Catholic Church in Oceanside, N.Y., after he married his same-sex partner. Nicholas Coppola (left ... |
Advocate.com | Iowa Venue Refuses to Host Gay Wedding Advocate.com Despite the state's marriage equality and antidiscrimination laws, the Mennonite owners of The Gortz Haus say they have the right to refuse service to gay couples based on their religious beliefs. Iowa Wedding Facility Rejects Gay Couple Because Of Owners' 'Religious Beliefs' Iowa Wedding Venue Tells Gay Couple to Look Elsewhere: VIDEO |
The Gay-Rights Revolution in America's Churches The Atlantic For most gay Americans in the 20th century, the church was a place of pain. It cast them out and called them evil. It cleaved them from their families. It condemned their love and denied their souls. In 2004, a president was elected when religious ... |
Advocate.com | Iowa Wedding Facility Rejects Gay Couple Because Of Owners' 'Religious Beliefs' ThinkProgress The Gortz House, a gallery and bistro just outside Des Moines, Iowa, has informed a gay couple that they are not welcome to host their wedding there. The business advertises itself as “the perfect venue for your wedding ceremony,†but that was ... Iowa Wedding Venue Tells Gay Couple to Look Elsewhere: VIDEO |
Raw Story | Columnist Applauds Russia's Homophobic Law Religion Dispatches The next time an anti-gay religious person tells you they really love homosexuals and wish them no ill will, bookmark this article and read it over and over again so you will never forget their true agenda: elimination of gay, lesbian, bisexual and ... Stephen Fry: Putin 'is Making Scapegoats of Gay People, Just as Hitler Did Jews' Foreign Ministry rights ombudsman insists on Russia's right to protect ... Why Banning Russia from the Olympics Is a Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very ... |
PinkNews.co.uk | Comment: A gay man writes about anxiety and depression caused by religious ... PinkNews.co.uk When I was a teenager in the UK of the 1970s and early 1980s, having begun to realise I was gay at around age twelve, I found myself in the very isolated and conflicted situation I describe above. Although my parents were not religious believers, and ... |
Daily News & Analysis | Irish gay group praises Pope Francis's airborne comments Irish Times The group also welcomed the pope's comments “because we believe that it is a small but important step towards undermining the spurious religious legitimacy used to underpin homophobic violence against LGBT peopleâ€. The group continued: “Pope ... Pope Francis gives hope to LGBT community Obsessing over the superficial, yet again Sacred slumber? â€" inaccurate exaggeration |
For the past week or so, I’ve been receiving press releases from a public relations firm representing students and former students at St. Lucy’s Priory High School in Glendora, Calif. They are not happy.
It seems that Ken Bencomo, who taught English at the school for 17 years, was recently fired from the Catholic institution. These folks want him to get his job back.
Bencomo was a very popular teacher, and it looks as if there were no complaints about his work. So why did the axe fall on him? Bencomo was fired after a local newspaper, the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, published a story about his July 1 wedding to Christopher Persky. Bencomo and Persky were among the first same-sex couples in California to be married after the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Hollingsworth v. Perry.
The hierarchy of the Catholic Church, you might recall, frowns on same-sex unions. Robert Alaniz, a spokesman for the school, told Religion News Service that Bencomo was fired for making his same-sex marriage a “public spectacle.â€
Brittany Littleton, a 2008 graduate of the school, has launched a petition drive on Bencomo’s behalf, collecting nearly 60,000 signatures. Littleton called Bencomo’s firing “a complete injustice†and added, “I was really horrified and sickened and so ashamed of my school for making this decision.â€
Indeed it sounds like a bad decision â€" a very bad one. But it’s one that the school had a right to make. This incident should remind us that private religious schools play by a very different set of rules than public institutions â€" and that’s why we must not give them taxpayer support.
California has some of the nation’s strictest laws banning employment discrimination against LGBT residents. That won’t help Bencomo because religious entities are exempt. St. Lucy’s can hire and fire at will, and it has the right to sack people for various “moral†offenses.
This is nothing new. In other parts of the country, religious schools have fired employees for publicly advocating views that are at odds with the sponsoring church. Women have been handed pink slips for getting pregnant out of wedlock. In Alabama, a science teacher and football coach at a Christian high school was fired recently even though he attended church faithfully. Officials at the school decided he was attending the wrong church.
These may be unjust decisions, but the people who own and operate religious schools have the right to make them. That is why we need to be clear about one thing: No one should be required to subsidize these institutions. Yet that is exactly what happens when vouchers and other forms of taxpayer aid to sectarian schools enter the picture. Suddenly everyone is subsidizing a school system that plays by its own set of (religiously inspired) rules, a system that is beyond the reach of public accountability.
California doesn’t have a voucher program. Voters there rather handily rejected such a plan at the ballot box in 2000. But these programs are, unfortunately, catching on in the states. Sooner or later, one of these taxpayer-funded voucher schools is going to find itself in court, facing an employment discrimination lawsuit.
When that happens, I hope the court takes a hard look at the issue and decides that once a “private†school decides to start siphoning money from the public treasury, it’s no longer really private and it forfeits its right to impose a religious litmus test on employees. The rule should be that once you accept Caesar’s coin, you must follow Caesar’s rules.
Of course, there is a way for religious schools to avoid this fate. They could rely on voluntary contributions to fund their schools and other projects and say a firm no to vouchers.
- Sponsors -
No comments:
Post a Comment