Another purge: one sin above all others.

Well, another teacher has been purged from a Roman Catholic school for daring to have married her same sex partner, this time in New Jersey.

Drumgoole “was not terminated because of her sexual orientation,” the motion says. “Instead, she was terminated for violating the Ministerial Policies and the Code of Ethics – in failing to abide by the tenets of the Roman Catholic faith, i.e. by entering into a same sex marriage.

And, you know, they are entitled to do so.  The courts have found that religious schools have broad rights in this regard.  But it's strange that they are so selective about which violation gets one axed.

Drumgoole also says that several Paramus Catholic faculty members are divorced, at least one has a child out of wedlock, various employees cohabitate with members of the opposite sex, at least one other teacher is gay, and nude photographs of another teacher have been circulated online. 

She says she feels as though she was singled out. “There are people who are living lives that go against the tenets of the church and they’re still employed there,” Drumgoole said in an interview.

One sin above all others.

See here for our other posts on the purges.

A twist in the latest Catholic school purges

Well, another month, more purges of Roman Catholic school teachers.  There was the married lesbian in Philadelphia who had worked for 8 years (married the whole time, to the knowledge of her school) but fired when a disgruntled parent reported her to the Archbishop.   The usual outcome;  the teacher was fired, there is bad press for the school, some parents and children are angry, the principal wrings her hands and says "we had no choice".

The in Portland, Oregon, St Mary's Academy found out that their new hire is lesbian and although not married, might some day like to marry as we often do.  They rescinded her contract and offered her six month's salary as hush money which she did not take.  It hits the press. Predictable outrage ensues.  Except, Portland being Portland, a lot of the students, alumni, and particularly big donors are pro-LGBT rights.

Interestingly the school reversed itself, and its Board unanimously put sexual orientation into its non-discrimination policy.   The position in question has been filled but they have reached out to the would-be employee.

"Conversations" with the Archdiocese are ongoing, but both the school and the Archdiocese warn that the school may lose its Catholic association over this.

Well well well.  This is one of the first Catholic schools to stand up to the purge of married LGBT people (and note, this would-be employee wasn't even married yet!)  although some of the colleges have accepted same sex marrieds (e.g., Fordham, Notre Dame).   We'll have to see what happens to St Mary's Academy.  And all this in the context of an impending visit from Pope Francis to the US.

Purge,denunciation, witch hunt

We have long noted the purges of gay teachers,  musicians, and others who work in Catholic schools or in lay positions, for breaking the Roman Catholic "Don't Ask Don't Tell" and getting married or otherwise coming out.  While it is the right of the church to do this, it is extremely distasteful.

But now it has moved from purge to witch hunt. New Ways Ministry, a pro-gay Catholic ministry, reports:

A Catholic Relief Services (CRS) employee has resigned amid controversy over his same-gender marriage.

Estridge is not a Catholic, and his job did not involve decisions which affected mission, so church affiliation and faith were not a requirement for his employment.

....Estridge’s resignation comes as the result of a vicious witch hunt launched by an anti-LGBT Catholic individual. The release of Estridge’s marriage license, including personal information like his home address, was [an]  intentional act .... he admits he targeted Estridge because he believes only Catholics in conformity with a strict interpretation of the faith should be working for the church. 

...Because this case was resolved by a gay employee losing his job, this type of resolution may ultimately encourage right wing activists’ targeting of LGBT church workers — a dangerous precedent as marriage equality could very well become national law later this month because of the anticipated U.S. Supreme Court ruling.

Indeed, many of the other cases have come become someone has  denounced the employees, but this is even beyond that. Extremist anti-gay conservative Catholics are relentless in their attacks.  (Indeed if you read the comments of online Catholic media, the anti-gay remarks will curl your hair).   But then, the vehemence is not surprising, given  the like of Archbishop Cordileone of San Francisco hysterically calling Caitlyn Jenner's transition "a reversion to the paganism of old, but with unique, postmodern variations on its themes, such as the practice of child sacrifice, the worship of feminine deities or the cult of priestesses."

The  goal of the extremists is to attack and harm LGBT people, driving them from their jobs and community. These  actions are hardly Christ-like, are they?

The purges go on: to US Roman Catholic Bishops, nothing is worse than being gay and married.

New purges in Roman Catholicism this week. 

 Item 1: two elderly MOntana men, active in their parish, and partners for 30 years, got married in Washington state. They didn't make a deal out of it, but someone told the new young priest in their parish and....

the two parishioners were told that they would no longer be allowed to participate in fundamental Catholic religious observances or ministry programs.

To restore their position within the Catholic Church, Huff and Wojtowick must obtain a divorce, discontinue living together, and write a restoration statement defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman. Wojtowick and Huff have thus far declined to do so.

Note that this is a Roman Catholic church not only demanding that they divorce (!) but also that they part. Leaving my wife would rip my heart out of me. I can't imagine the brutal fanaticism that would demand such cruelty. The Bishop met with the community about this but did not change his mind.

Bishop Michael Warfel of the Diocese of Great Falls-Billings met Saturday with about 300 parishioners of St. Leo the Great Catholic Church in Lewistown, where he also led a Mass. About half the parishioners supported the Rev. Samuel Spiering’s decision, while the other half were very angry.

“There obviously is polarization, and certainly what I want to do is try to effect some healing,” Warfel said Saturday. “At the same time, as a Catholic bishop, I uphold our Catholic teachings.”

Yeah, good luck with that, Bishop. Not sure how you can heal anything when you have bitterly divided a community.

Item 2: another church organist fired, this time by reliably anti-gay campaigner Archbishop John Nienstedt of Minnesota.

"Our beloved Director of Music, Jamie Moore, married his long-time partner Garrett this past weekend," the Rev. Bob White, of St. Victoria Catholic Church, wrote in a letter to parishioners posted on the parish website this week. "Since Jamie's marriage conflicts with official Church teaching, Archbishop Nienstedt asked for Jamie's resignation." (MPR)

As a nice touch, they fired Jamie while he was on his honeymoon. Stay classy, Archbishop.

Nienstedt is rather embattled, not only having failed to stop marriage equality from reaching MN, but also because he has been accused of inappropriate sexual contact with priests and seminarians.  A law firm hired by the archdiocese is examining the claims but no reports have been made.

Andrew Sullivan (a gay Catholic) writes,

If the church upholds this kind of decision, it is endorsing cruelty, discrimination and exclusion. Pope Francis’ view is that this is exactly the kind of thing that requires the church to exercise mercy not rigidity. But allowing a married gay couple to sing in the choir as an act of “mercy” would merely further expose the fragility of the church’s thirteenth century views of human sexuality. It would put the lie to the otherness of gay people; to the notion that it is essential or even possible for a tiny minority to live entirely without intimacy or love or commitment. It also reveals that gay men have long been a part of the church – and tolerated, as long as they lied about their lives and gave others plausible deniability with respect to their sexual orientation. It is an endorsement of dishonesty. 

None of this is compatible with the core moral teachings of the church – about fairness, truth, compassion, forgiveness, mercy and inclusion. And this is clear to large numbers of Catholics – especially the younger generation who will rightly view this kind of decision as barbaric and inhuman. There is only so much inhumanity that a church can be seen to represent before its own members lose faith in it...... When a church responds to an act of love and commitment not by celebration but by ostracism, it is not just attacking a couple’s human dignity; it is also attacking itself.  

MOre coverage of purges here. 

Another purge

Here we go again.  This time, two teachers in St Louis, who kept their relationship private, married and applied for a mortgage.  Their employer, the Cor Jesu high school, was sent the mortgage application and now the two teachers are jobless.  So much for buying a house together. 

Reichert said she and Gambaro were asked to resign after the school said in late July it received a copy of a mortgage application with the couple’s names. The couple had married in New York over the summer and the school said they had violated the moral contract faculty are required to sign as part of employment.....

In a Facebook post, Gambaro wrote that although alumnae support for her and her wife had been overwhelming, “the law is not on our side, nor is the church, so we have no ground to stand on.”

So do we conclude that none of the other teachers at Cor Jesu use birth control, or have sex out of marriage, or have remarried following divorce?  My, they are a pure bunch.

According to a recent poll by Quinnipiac University, a growing number of Catholics support same-sex marriage. The 2013 poll, which surveyed close to 500 Catholics, found that 54 percent of Catholic voters support same-sex marriage, while 38 percent oppose it. 

Gambaro and Reichert, for their part, said they hoped their terminations would “guide the Catholic school system towards greater tolerance and acknowledgment of LGBTQ issues.” 

“We are both grateful for the time we had at Cor Jesu Academy,” Gambaro and Reichert wrote to the Post-Dispatch. We “will cherish the memories and experiences created with students, athletes, and colleagues over the years.” 

Our previous coverage of Roman Catholic purges of gay employees here.

Another day, another Catholic music leader purged

Meanwhile, from Chicago, we find that another musician purged from his Catholic church for getting married to his same-sex partner.

Collette, 52, was fired Monday after working for the Archdiocese of Chicago for 23 years, first at St. James Catholic Church in Bronzeville. ...

Collette said the church’s pastor knew he was gay, and had attended dinners with the couple. He also helped him walk down the aisle during his mother’s funeral two years ago.

Ah, sounds like a gracious priest.  But here we have another example of violating Roman Catholic "don't ask, don't tell."

Collette told the Chicago Sun-Times someone sent to Cardinal Francis George a Facebook image featuring the couple after their engagement. The cardinal then sent the church’s pastor an email calling for Collette’s resignation, he says. When he refused to resign, he was fired.

So, someone decided to denounce Mr Collette by forwarding his facebook picture to the Bishop.  Really?  What is it with conservative Catholics that they are so obsessed with denouncing their fellow Catholics?  It's quite shameful.

Mr Collette responds with grace.

“This voice inside of me said, ‘No, wait a minute. Well, no. I didn’t do anything wrong.’ I said, ‘I’m not going to resign. God brought me to this moment and God is saying this is why I created you. You are here to live and love.’”

....

“I’m not angry. The closest way to describe how I feel is if you’ve ever lost anyone that you loved, your mom or dad or grandmother,” Collette said. “That feeling you get in your stomach that your life is never going to be the same. That’s what I’m feeling. Only instead of losing one person, I just lost 3,000 people.” 

Writing in the National Catholic Reporter, Fr Thomas Reese comments,

The bishops say they do not discriminate against gay employees but do not want to be seen as endorsing homosexual activity or gay marriage. As a result, we see employees who for years were known to be gay being fired from church-affiliated organizations after they got married. We also see bishops opposing the granting of spousal benefits to gay spouses. 

I am old enough to remember the days when church employees were fired for getting remarried after a divorce. In those days, the church used the same arguments that it is using today against gay employees. 

I have never understood how the bishops with a straight face can impose their sexual ethics on gay employees if they are not willing to do the same with their heterosexual employees.
Today, divorced and remarried employees are no longer fired. Nor are employees fired for extramarital activity. Spouses of divorced and remarried employees get spousal benefits. Why can't gay spouses be treated the same? 

The bishops are losing the battle against gay marriage in the court of law and the court of public opinion. How the bishops deal with defeat will be telling. Can they accept the defeat over gay marriage as an earlier generation of bishops accepted their defeat over the legalization of divorce and move on? Or are they willing to ghettoize Catholic charities and other institutions by forbidding them from accepting federal contracts and following the law? 

Previous coverage of Roman Catholic anti-gay purges here. 

The Roman Catholic Purge continues

In today's news, we learn that the latest victim of the purge is a director of a food pantry of a Roman Catholic church.

On Wednesday, [Colleen Simon] managed a delivery of 2,000 pounds of food for the pantry at St. Francis Xavier Church. It’s work she sees as fulfilling God’s will, his call to serve....

But apparently, that is not the way the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph sees her role. Not anymore. Not after it was publicized that Simon is gay and married to another woman.

 She had told the parish priest she was married but was careful to live don't ask-don't tell, until a story about the food pantry inadvertantly outed her. And next thing that happens, is she's out of a job. In a nice irony, her wife is a Lutheran pastor. And Colleen is a Lutheran.

Meanwhile, there is a growing backlash against the new drive of some dioceses to make it explicit that supporting gay rights is a fireable offense, even outside the classroom.

Consider the language of the contract: Teachers are forbidden from showing "public support of ... the homosexual lifestyle." What does that mean, precisely? Pretty obviously, it is directed at the Mike Moroski situation [in which a principal was fired for expressing support for civil marriage equality on FB]. Catholic school teachers will have to be much more circumspect in their politics if they want to remain employed. And they had better be careful where their gay friends and relatives are concerned. Show up to your gay son's or daughter's wedding and you could face termination.

One teacher, who has a gay son, has already resigned. How can she be supportive of her son's civil rights if she signs such a contract? The Diocese is spinning.

Archdiocese officials defend the contract, saying it doesn’t mean that teachers have to sever relationships with gay family members, just that they can’t publicly act or speak against the church’s teachings.

“Our culture is changing rapidly in this area, and many of our school employees, including me, have family members who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender,” Catholic School Superintendent Jim Rigg has said. “As Christians, we are called to love and serve all people. … While the church’s stance on homosexual marriage is well-known, this does not mean that our teachers will be asked to cast away loved family members.”

That argument doesn't work. People are being fired for getting married, or expressing support for marriage.  If your gay son gets married and you celebrate the fact on your facebook page, you are expressing support for his actions. Just like Mike Moroski. So you should be fired.  QED.

Now, I actually think the Roman Catholic church is completely entitled to have these rules.  They are a private employer and they can decide whom they want to employ.  What they CAN'T do is play the victim if people react with horror at their actions.  So if the broader culture looks askance at their hypocrisy, in which they shriek against those who have a same sex marriage, but ignore those who may be remarried after divorce, using birth control, or having sex outside of marriage, well, that's the cost of doing business.  Freedom of religion doesn't mean freedom from criticism.

Our previous discussions of the purges here.

Z-day and Eastside Catholic

this is the official logo

Gotta hand it to them, the kids at Eastside Catholic in Sammamish WA are not letting up.  That's the high school where their teacher and vice principal, Mark Zmuda, was fired for having married his (male) partner.  (We covered the story here).  Students continue to organize and protest, in a way we haven't seen with the other purges.

It doesn't look good when the Principal said he could stay if he only got a divorce.  This has gone national--here's the take from Bloomberg:

Sister Mary Tracy faced a crisis not of faith but of doctrine: The president of Eastside Catholicmiddle and high school near Seattle found herself last month in the awkward position of asking an employee to disobey one Catholic teaching to fulfill another. 

...Because gay marriage violates Catholic doctrine, last month [Zmuda] was fired (the school says he resigned). Just before the firing, however, Sister Mary offered a compromise, according to Zmuda: He could keep his job if he got a divorce. 

Divorce also violates church teachings, of course. “I was trying to hang onto him,” Sister Mary told a Seattle TV station, saying she was not proud of the suggestion and that the decision to fire Zmuda was the church’s, not the school’s. 

There’s a lesson for the church in Sister Mary’s offer. Yes, it is hypocritical -- but it also illustrates how Catholic creed isn’t static..... The question is how or whether Catholicism will evolve to avoid such self-inflicted wounds.

I'm going to bet that Sr Mary will not be Principal much longer.

And the students have called for a National "Z-day", asking people to wear orange (school color) on January 31st  in support of Mr Z and their call for justice.

A current review of the case is here.

Facebook page here.

Tumblr (with more links) here

twitter:  #KeepMrZ2013

Eastside Catholic and Mr Z...and Ms M (updated)

Well, another purge in the Roman Catholic church of a married gay teacher--this time at Eastside Catholic, in Sammamish, WA , hasn't quite gone as planned.  The students have done a series of walk-outs and protests (gotta love these young Catholics!) .  They aren't letting this go.

And the fired teacher (vice principal, actually) has reported in an interview that the principal offered him his job back-- and a commitment ceremony -- if he got a divorce.

“Apparently the fact that I have a same-sex partner and (am) having a same-sex marriage . . . they are against that,...But I also thought another teaching they were against was divorce. I’m a little shocked that was even on the table to have me keep my job. They also offered for me to have a commitment ceremony if I were willing to get a divorce.”

As Andrew Sullivan writes,

What does it say about the twisted, absurd view of homosexual persons that the Catholic Church should demand that they divorce their spouses as a condition of working for a Catholic organization? It tells you so much. What the church is saying by this is that homosexuals should be punished for constructing stable, committed relationships of mutual care and support. If they stay single or have some kind of down-low commitment ceremony, all will be ignored.

And, lest you think this is going to die down.... another teacher at the same school has announced that she's going to marry her partner, another woman.

Today, she will wear her engagement ring to school. 

“Either I’ll be fired or the students will say, ‘right on,’” Merrow told local radio station KIRO-FM, according to KING 5 News. 

“It doesn’t matter if I get fired, I want (students) to know that I think what they did was incredible and if anything changes, it’s going to be because of this next generation,” Merrow added. 

She also spoke about the firing of Vice Principal Zmuda. 

“They’re not firing people who are straight that are doing things that aren’t Catholic,” she said, “They’re just firing Mark.”

Yes the smell of hypocrisy is rather strong. And they wonder why young Catholics leave.

More on previous purges here.

Update: The lesbian teacher is actually a part-time vocal coach. Her contract doesn't require her to abide by Catholic teaching. 

Merrow, who is not a teacher at Eastside Catholic and works only on the school musical, said she has not been impressed by the school's handling of Zmuda and wonders if she might be treated differently because she didn't sign the same teacher contract as he did. 

Her employment agreement was narrow in scope and didn't discuss following Catholic teachings on issues like gay marriage, she said.

I just can't get worked up over it.

So, in the news this week:

A reality television star whose reality is that of a rural Evangelical nut case says some offensive things about gays, says some even more offensive things about African Americans, and everyone clutches their pearls.

To the conservatives:  Free speech means you can indeed say what you want.  It means the government cannot imprison you or prevent you from speaking. It  does NOT mean you can say what you want and remain employed. And it applies to left as well as right.  As Juan Williams says

“The right goes after Martin Bashir, they wanted Martin Bashir fired,” Williams said. “Remember Dixie Chicks, or Tim Robbins, or Bill Maher? All of that, the right says get them out of here. But then they want to cry foul when people are intolerant of them.” 

“The reason that the right is so strongly backing this is because they think this is a potential wedge issue, especially with older, white, evangelical voters,” Williams said. 

“When I got fired, it was part of an honest debate about terrorism in our society. My employer didn’t like it and fired me. But this is not about honest debate. What was said actually shuts down debate. It was ugly language about homosexual acts. It invites bigotry. It invites people to hate people who are gay. And this is amazing, because it is not in the Christian tradition to make judgments about them and to put them in a box.”

Hypocrisy, much?

Then there was another Roman Catholic purge of a gay teacher  who got married, this time in Washington state.  (I've told you about many of these before).

This time, however, the students are responding strongly.  The students staged a walk out, which spread to other Catholic high schools in the Archdiocese.  And, they took it to the office of the Archdiocese chanting "Change the Church."  Remember, there's a huge fall-away of young Catholics from the church in this country.  This is why. These kids are standing up for what they think is right.  And, hearteningly, many of their parents are right behind them.

Here we go again: the Roman Catholic purge

The Roman Catholic purge of gay and lesbian teachers continues.  I've told you about this before, this spate of firings of teachers  who are discovered to be gay and partnered, sometimes in response to anonymous denunciations.  And it just keeps happening.

The latest one is rather different.  The teacher in this case  was perfectly open about his sexuality.  He even brought his partner to school events.  Here, the sin he committed was simply to get a marriage license.  A civil marriage license.  That was enough to terminate him.

Now, there are numerous types of civil marriages that the Roman Catholic church considers invalid.  The obvious one is marriage between people who are divorced.   But if you are Catholic and you get a civil marriage rather than a Church marriage, it is not recognized by the Church either.  I wonder if they are poking their noses into their straight teachers' lives, asking if they've been divorced, or where they got married.

Needless to say this sort of thing isn't looking good for the church. Fair minded people with friends or family who are LGBT notice, and disagree.  This is one of things that makes "ex-Catholic" a rapidly expanding religious identity in this country.

Firing a man for taking advantage of his civil rights and making a commitment to his partner?  NOT a good move.

Attn Timothy Cardinal Dolan:  this is how you get "out-marketed".

A cult of denunciation

We've talked previously about the efforts of Roman Catholic institutions to purge themselves of Teh Gay, notably in firing teachers who are outed in some way--either for a news story about their marriage, or a mention of a same sex partner in an obituary.

And in nearly every case, we find reference to "letters from concerned parents" and sometimes even anonymous letters, exposing the teacher as gay, even if they were deeply closeted at school.

It happened in Minnesota, where the headmaster of a Catholic highschool was recently exposed and forced to resign.  (They deny that he was forced, of course, but they also made it clear he couldn't remain.) He hadn't mentioned for 18 years that he had a partner and children.

Hudson revealed the relationship during a conversation with Mark Motzel and Mary Wilcox, co-presidents of the school’s corporate board, whom he met with periodically in his CEO-like role at the Fridley school, Motzel said Tuesday. Before the most recent get-together, Motzel and Wilcox had become aware of information that Motzel described only as “inconclusive,” and the conversation took a personal turn. ...

What was that information?  Well, we learn  of a second teacher who has recently left the same school, fired for admitting she's gay.  She tells an interviewer,

Bill Hudson’s resignation was prompted by anonymous information provided to the chairpersons of the Totino-Grace corporate board. Bill’s departure under such disquieting circumstances was difficult for everyone in our school community, particularly for those of us who are gay or lesbian. Unfortunately, what we all feared only loosely – that we would be fired or asked to resign if we were “outed” – became too real to ignore.

So, that being the case, why did she tell them? Because she has a sense of honor:

Every year, Totino-Grace has adopted a school theme based on Catholic school teaching or the lives of our founders. This year’s theme, “Make Your Mark,” is based on St. John Baptist de la Salle’s prayer “Lord, the work is Yours” and his hope that we all do well the work to which God calls us....

I was struck by the dissonance between the meaning of our themes and the events that had recently taken place. I found myself trying to buy time while I tried to figure out how I could encourage others to “make their mark” if I was willing to be part of a community where I was required to hide and compromise and deny who I am. How could I ask others to give themselves entirely to the work God calls them to when I couldn’t do this myself?

This teacher refused to resign, and was terminated.

Honestly, this pattern of letters or anonymous information that is outing teachers and leading to their termination,  them is the worst sort of purity cult, crossed by the culture of denunciation.  Straight out of the East German Stasi. 

If the goal is to eliminate teachers and others who do not live by the Church's doctrinal rules, one must wonder;  what about the divorced/remarried?  What about those with no children?  Will the whispers and secret letters be sent around demanding them to be removed, as well?



 

Roman Catholic church purge: more don't ask don't tell

First, it was the musicians. Gay organist Nick Johns was fired in Georgia for his pro-gay facebook page. In Missouri, music teacher Al Fischer was let go for being "too open"

The reason given by the priest, according to Robin, was that Fischer's firing and pending marriage had become "too public of an issue."

Music Director Steav Bates-Congdon was fired from his job in North Carolina after going to New York to marry his partner --not because he was gay, but again, because he got married.

Then, it was the teachers. Ohio teacher Carla Hale was fired from her job in Catholic school for being in a relationship:

The physical education teacher took time off from school in February in the wake of her mother’s death. Her mother’s obituary mentioned Hale and her female partner as survivors, which attracted the attention of an “appalled” parent....

That parent wrote an anonymous letter to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Columbus, and administrators responded by firing Hale later in March for violating a morality clause.

Then in Southern California, when teacher Ken Bencomo was fired from his job, not because he was gay (because they knew that) but ..

after photos of his wedding to partner Christopher ....were published in a local newspaper last month....Bencomo had worked at St. Lucy’s for 17 years and school administrators knew of his sexual orientation for most of that time, his attorney, Patrick McGarrigle, said.

....
In a statement released through an attorney earlier this month, the school said ....
"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 reads. "These values are incorporated into the contractual obligations of each of our instructors and other employees."

Finally, in Rhode Island, a married gay couple has been told they aren't welcome to take communion--UNLESS they get divorced.

Pryor said the priest told him he would give him communion if he ended his marriage to Laveilee.

What do all these have in common?  It's not that they were gay.  They were known to be gay, in most cases, and known to have a partner.

No, the sin of these people was having it become public.  Where "appalled parents" can find out that there are GAY people here!  So, just to get this straight, so to speak--as long as it's on the "down low" and no one "outside" knows, it's cool.  Even if "living in sin".  But make a public commitment to one another, till death do us part civil marriage, and it's "Shocked!  Shocked!  There are gay people here!"

Of course, it's also a great example of hypocrisy.  As one commentator writes,

I want to separate the question whether Catholic institutions have the right to do this sort of thing from the question whether they should, on either moral or prudential grounds. I am not aware of divorced and remarried teachers getting fired. The axe always seems to fall on those who are somewhat more easily marginalized: unmarried pregnant teachers, gay teachers, etc. 

Yeah, no kidding.  And if you are a married female who is never pregnant, don't you think they ought to be suspicious that you are not upholding the Church doctrine of fecundity?

Years ago, over on our parent blog Fr Jake Stops the World, there was a debate between an anti-gay conservative priest and a pro-gay commenter.  As I recall, the anti-gay priest basically said it was better for a gay man to have promiscuous anonymous sex, because he could repent each time, rather than be married and live in a state of constant sin.

I thought that was a twisted logic then and I still think it's twisted.  And this Roman Catholic purge of gay people isn't going so well either.  For the teacher in San Bernardino Cty, there have been rallies of support.  And while I am sure that  there are some parents who are pleased he was fired, many more are dismayed.  

See, gay people don't live in a vaccuum.  We have families, co-workers, and friends who see in us and our relationships something worth supporting.  And as the Roman Catholics keep purging, they might find they purge all those friendly straight Catholics, too.