An outpouring of support for two gay teachers, who have been told they can no longer work at Catholic schools because of their plans to get married, provides fresh evidence of a shift in public opinion about sexual orientation and marriage equality.
The latest teacher to face unemployment is Matthew Eledge, an English teacher at Skutt Catholic High School in Omaha, Neb., whose contract the administration chose not to renew after officials learned about his engagement to another man, local reports said.
Students and fellow staffers who have launched a campaign calling for Eledge’s reinstatement have also alleged the school threatened to fire him if he told his students.
They found out anyway and have since started rallying to get the decision reversed.
Eledge has declined to publicly discuss the school’s action, but he told Omaha’s World-Herald he is “humbled and overwhelmed by the overwhelmingly supportive alumni and parents and kids.”
Students have been quick to call the treatment plain discrimination and demand a reversal. They have already gathered 45,000 signatures on an online petition.
“When Mr. Eledge, or any other teacher, becomes engaged, what they do in their private life is between themselves and God. Not for us to assume or judge,” wrote Kacie Hughes, who serves as the school’s assistant speech coach under Eledge and launched the campaign.
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Eledge is by no means the first openly gay employee to be rejected by a school with a religious affiliation.
In Des Moines, Iowa, Tyler McCubbin, a substitute teacher at Dowling Catholic High School, was denied a full-time job this month when administrators conducted a background check that included a scan of his Facebook page, and learned he was gay and engaged.
The discovery also cost him his substitute teaching and coaching positions, and dismayed students orchestrated a walkout, ditching their classes on Wednesday.
“I’ve learned that amidst a small amount of people who hate, there’s at least hundred times more love that comes from that,” McCubbin told the Des Moines Register this week. “People just want you to be themselves — or yourself I should say.”
The Des Moines Diocese maintains it’s well within its rights to deny McCubbin employment on religious grounds.
Iowa has protective policies for employees of public and private schools, but religious schools such as Dowling are exempt.
The U.S. Supreme Court set a national precedent in 2012, allowing religious schools to take sexual orientation into account in the hiring and firing of employees.
“They could certainly file a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, but it’s unlikely they’ll prevail in a claim,” said Sarah Warbelow, legal director of the Washington, D.C.-based Human Rights Campaign.
“Religious schools are going to have the ability to hire and fire teachers consistent with the school’s faith views,” Warbelow told the Daily News.
The outcry against Eledge’s lost contract at Skutt Catholic High School, which counts about 500 students, can be interpreted as a sign that public opinion on matters of sexual orientation and gender identity is evolving.
“When they see a beloved teacher who has done an excellent job, being fired for celebrating a life milestone, it invokes in these students the deepening understanding of an injustice,” Warbelow added.
