Fired teacher needs to check the contract

Teacher employed by Catholic school. Teacher’s contract stipulates gay marriage is cause for termination.

Teacher discovered to be in gay marriage. Teacher gets fired. Teacher, incomprehensibly, is shocked. Teacher threatens lawsuit. Uproar ensues. Welcome to today’s entitlementdriven society, where previously agreed-upon rules go out the window the second they become “inconvenient.” Teaching is a privilege – not a right – so when teachers accept conditions of employment, they are legally bound to follow those rules. Students know that when they break the rules, there are consequences, and it’s no different for teachers.

So when one violates the terms of employment, the school has every right to terminate him or her – and there should be no legal standing to sue the school.

But thanks to our entitlement mentality, it’s never that simple.

Just look at the increasing number of cases where a Catholic school teacher is discovered to be gay and subsequently fired, only to have that person turn around and threaten (baseless) legal action.

Earlier this year in Florida, a first-grade teacher married her girlfriend and was promptly fired.

Some parents and students were furious and demanded she be reinstated, with one parent lamenting, “This is really bad … It can’t be that in 2018 they still do this type of thing” – as if rules should no longer apply because we’re in the 21st century. The church, to its credit, stood firm.

And just this week, Shelly Fitzgerald, a guidance counselor at Roncalli Catholic High School in Indianapolis, was placed on administrative leave after school officials discovered that she was in a same-sex marriage. Fitzgerald is reportedly considering a discrimination lawsuit.

At its core, this is not about gays, gay rights or gay marriage. It is about a private entity exercising its right – yes, its legal right – to choose employees it believes are best suited for the business.

People can agree with such decisions, or believe them to be unfair, but unquestionably, a Catholic school is within its legal purview to fire gay teachers. Attempts to undermine that fundamental right is sinful.

It isn’t anti-gay bigotry to allow a baker the discretion to choose his clients (so that he isn’t forced to bake a cake for the KKK, ISIS sympathizers, and yes, for a gay marriage couple).

And prohibiting NFL players from kneeling during the national anthem has nothing to do with freedom of speech. Instead, both issues are about the right of private entities to make decisions in their best interests.

In that vein, we must not let the firing of gay teachers devolve into an off-track debate. It is about workplace freedom, plain and simple.

Bottom line: If one wants to teach in Catholic school, they are obligated to follow its rules.

Every time these situations occur, they are accompanied by naïve calls for the pope to intervene. But that’s not happening. It’s a pipe dream perpetuated by those who cannot see the difference between a compassionate pope – “Who am I to judge homosexuals?” – and one who innately understands that keeping an overt homosexual employed as guidance counselor or teacher in a Catholic school would open the floodgates, destroying the essence of what makes Catholic education unique.

Flip the coin. Should Planned Parenthood be forced to employ a devout pro-lifer? Since doing so would be bad for “business,” as well as contrary to the organization’s goals, Planned Parenthood would rightfully reject that.

The decision to terminate overtly gay teachers is the only one a Catholic school can make to maintain its integrity, at least until the church changes its positions on homosexuals and gay marriage.

Does being in a gay marriage make Shelly Fitzgerald any less of a person? Of course not. Did she do a good job? By all accounts, most definitely. But the issue isn’t about Ms. Fitzgerald. It’s about a Catholic entity adhering to the rules of the Catholic Church.

Should Rome look at changing, or at least updating, its positions on homosexuality, birth control, marriage for priests, and woman priests? Absolutely! Likewise, the church should be called on the carpet when it employs divorced heterosexuals – especially those who remarry without obtaining an annulment – since those acts are in violation of church tenets.

But until then, those who think they’re entitled to change the rules need to say an Act of Contrition and pray they receive the spirit – of common sense.

Amen.