Catholic High School Cans Teacher After His Big, Gay Wedding

Catholic High School Cans Teacher After His Big, Gay Wedding

news.yahoo.com

Matrimonial bliss turned into an employment nightmare for a gay Catholic high school teacher in the suburban sprawl of Southern California after a local newspaper published photos of his big, gay wedding in July.
“While the school does not discriminate against teachers or other school employees based on their private lifestyle choices, public displays of behavior that are directly contrary to church teachings are inconsistent with these values,” the statement says, according to the Times.

(visit the link for the full news article)

So, they allow this guy to teach at their school for 17 years, knowing all the while that he is gay, but as soon as he marries his partner, they fire him?
Hummmm... that doesn't seem fair, does it?!

So, the church is okay with men being gay, it seems...until a story is made public making it appear they condone gays?

Arrrrgggghhhh! What's wrong with this picture?!

news.yahoo.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

reply to post by sled735


He knew their policy, he chose to challenge it and now hes facing the consequences. Seems pretty cut and dry to me

reply to post by sled735


they should have fired him 17 years ago

reply to post by Sharingan


I went and read the full article on this.

The man said he attended many school functions with his partner. No one from the school addressed him about that being a problem during his 17 years of teaching there.

Wouldn't that be considered as a "public display?"

I agree, this doesn't seem fair to the man, after 17 years of service to the school.

reply to post by Mindless1980


Thing is that he went and had a "big, gay wedding, with either the press there or someone sent photos of it to the press.
The OP left this part out of the quote from the article.

School officials noted that employees have a contractual obligation to abide by those values in public.

Its a private organization with no public funds, they can pretty much do what they want.

Originally posted by sled735
So, the church is okay with men being gay, it seems...until a story is made public making it appear they condone gays?

That's correct. Catholic teaching is that it isn't a sin to be homosexual. The sin is when you engage in homosexual activities or when you advocate a gay lifestyle.

The school is a Catholic church school. It's part of the Catholic church outreach. They have a right to decide who teaches and who doesn't. And the man, being gay, knew what would happen when he started working there. So honestly .. it's his own fault for deciding to work in a church outreach school when he knew that his life choices were incompatible.

It seems to me that they are happy to "tolerate" a gay employee and even his partner, but when they married, they felt it was a slap in the face - because Catholics (like all the other mainstream religious cults out there) are inherently anti-gay marriage.

It looks like they decided that their token gay employee took it too far when he took the legal right to marry.

Personally, I think it's astounding that any gay person would want to work for such a bigoted and hateful group of people. Why do any gay people involve themselves in a cult that directly attacks them at every opportunity?

I kind of get sick of these stories. It's sad, but at the same time it's predictable and boring. On the plus side, I also think it helps to push people away from the various cults out there, and that can only be a good thing in the long run. If it angers another few hundred people enough to give up trying to placate the cultists, then that's a bonus in my opinion.

I get so fed up with all this nonsense about integrating and debating these things with cults like this. They are homophobic, they are bigots, they are not unlike the Taliban, and they use every opportunity to attack gay people.

This is like expecting black people to have conversation and integration with white supremacists.

reply to post by Rocker2013


Your behaviour in the way you talk about the members of that religious group,
Shows you to be bigoted and offensive, Not to mention attacking them at every chance you get.

Remember, Let he who cast the first stone.....

People hate the Catholic Church because it's the true Church of our Lord Jesus Christ and are seeking to destroy it. They will fail of course because the Lord will protect his true followers.

If you contractually agree to Terms & Conditions and then get in trouble for not following them, I fail to see how that's the other person's fault.

Let's ask another question. What openly gay man would subject himself to that kind of treatment, daily, knowing full well he didn't agree with the circumstances? I certainly would not work in an environment where my sexual orientation is taught to have come from the devil.

In any case, the school, has the right to do as it pleases. It's unfortunate and I don't agree with it, but there you have it.

If he didin't want to be discriminated against for being gay, he should not have joined and stayed with an organization that openly does that.

~Tenth

Originally posted by AmmonSeth
reply to post by Rocker2013

 

Your behaviour in the way you talk about the members of that religious group,
Shows you to be bigoted and offensive, Not to mention attacking them at every chance you get.

Remember, Let he who cast the first stone.....

I attack those who attack me.
I have learned over many years that those of a religious mindset believe that they are superior to others, that they have a right to dictate to others, and that they think they have some mandate to control the society around them.

They are not much better than the Taliban in that regard, forcing their religious views on others at every opportunity, using religious texts as excuses to attack others, deliberately trying to inflict their rules onto people who do not agree with them.

I call them a cult because that is what they are. They use the same methods that cults use, they brainwash people into believing complete BS, they attack those who don't comply to their beliefs.

If you want to know why I attack the religious in this way, you just need to look at their own behavior towards the society around them.

If this were Muslim groups forcing their laws and moralistic arrogance on others there would be outrage. I see this as no different.

Yes, there might be entirely nice people within these groups, but that doesn't change the fact that these groups still attack others at every chance they get. I have the right to confront that with an argument, and I refuse to be dictated to by anyone wishing to defend these bigots.

You can call me bigoted all you like, but I don't call for their banning, I don't try to campaign to attack them, I don't think they deserve any less or any more than any other member of our societies - which is exactly what they try to do.

I feel that everyone should have the right to believe what they want to believe. But, that tolerance of beliefs does not extend to them forcing laws and their moral opinions onto the society around them when it has no bearing on their own existence.

Originally posted by CyberneticProphet
People hate the Catholic Church because it's the true Church of our Lord Jesus Christ and are seeking to destroy it. They will fail of course because the Lord will protect his true followers.

You're wrong.
I hate the Catholic Church (and all other organized religion) because it seeks to control the population and deny freedoms and basic Human rights.

These organized religious groups attack others and try to inflict their beliefs on the societies around them, influencing government and law to their demands, damaging the health and well-being of millions of people.

I would not accept having my freedoms limited by any religious BS, whether that's Catholic or Islamic in nature.

Could it be that they feel he might cut into the 'hunting' opportunities of the priests in the church. There is more than a short list of victims.

Originally posted by roadgravel
Could it be that they feel he might cut into the 'hunting' opportunities of the priests in the church. There is more than a short list of victims.

Wow thats clever
You should try to actually read the article though

Bencomo taught at the all-girls high school for 17 years.

After reading the article the following can be stated:

While it is true that he is gay and lives in California, they problem is that ultimately the teacher crossed the line when it comes to the school that he taught at. The school, is a private school, where it is a reglious school and ran by the Catholic church.

While they may have known he was gay, it was one of those cases where as long as it was not out and where they had to be reminded of it, he probably would have had his job. But he did not do that, where he crossed the line was by getting married and it was ultimately posted in the paper.

The one thing that many people tend to forget, and I don't believe that the instructor considered, is that the Catholic Church was and is still a large support of Prop 8, even though it was over turned in the courts.

While it may seem wrong, the reality is that this organization, the Catholic Church, is not going to go against its docturn, nor will it consider anything other than what comes from the Holy See. And as long as the standard has been that ultimately the Catholic Church views that the acts of homosexuality as being wrong and a sin, there will always be an element of discrimination in their organizations towards those who are in a same sex relationship and is known.

reply to post by Sharingan

Doesn't matter in the big picture of the church. Gotta keep all loose ends tied.

Originally posted by Sharingan
reply to post by sled735

 

He knew their policy, he chose to challenge it and now hes facing the consequences. Seems pretty cut and dry to me

Could be. But this is an unfolding event and we've as yet to see the entirety of the consequences - there may be more and they may affect things besides this individual's employment.

If racial minorities or women or disabled people hadn't fought injustice in the past, we wouldn't have made progress in those areas, either. And while I'm sure most people who think it's OK this teacher was fired probably would be OK with companies firing/not hiring minorities, women or the disabled, most people are not and support the gay movement's attempt for equality.

Couple of things to keep in mind: California has a law that employers cannot discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation. While I know people enjoy the argument that private religious employers have, in the past, been able to be excused from laws like this, the world is a quickly-changing place and this arrangement is full of unforeseen problems. At some point, just like with racial or gender discrimination, religion will not be tolerated as an excuse for hatred.

The school has a significant problem in that there is abundant evidence that the teacher's sexual orientation was well-known for many years ... without any affect on his employment status. All of the arguments that it was his fault for working at a place that doesn't like homosexuals are severely minimized when this is taken into consideration. Is the school's issue with his sexual orientation or with his "gay" marriage? If it's orientation, they've shot themselves in the foot for being OK with it for so many years. If it's gay marriage, again, gay marriage is legal in California so we're back to religious organizations being allowed to modify laws for their own purposes ... which is somewhat tolerated, but, I feel, becoming less and less okay with the general population. I couldn't quickly find evidence, but I feel certain that this institution does, in fact, receive some sort of state education money.

Thirdly, he was, apparently, a loved faculty member with involvement in all sorts of activities, in addition to teaching. The students have rallied around him and are actively protesting this with, for example, a petition that currently has over 15,000 signatures. This problem isn't likely to go away.

This leads to my fourth point: there are Catholic organizations that not only employ gay people, but actively prohibit sexual orientation discrimination and support gay marriage and adoption! I know of one, for example, that has 25,000 employees in six states. The point is that it can potentially become a thorny issue for one Catholic organization to use Catholic doctrine to excuse themselves from laws that protect individuals and attempt to minimize injustice and another that does not. We can argue different states and different ways of looking at religious teachings, but we all know that in the very near future, firing someone because they engaged in a legal transaction is not going to be tolerated, whether it's a religious institution or not. Just a matter of time.

So, to be clear, they're not sacking him for being a poor teacher, they're sacking him because he married someone of the same sex?


I dont get it.

Originally posted by acacko
reply to post by sled735

 

they should have fired him 17 years ago

For what?