America magazine school fires gay teacher
Catholic Philadelphia Area Upper School Fires Gay Educator After he Applies for Marriage License
Washington – The Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) civil rights organization, is calling on Holy Ghost Preparatory Educational facility in Bensalem, PA to immediately cease discriminatory employment practices targeting their LGBT teachers. Last week, Michael Griffin, a teacher at Holy Ghost Prep, emailed the principal of the school telling him he might be late on Friday because he was applying for a marriage license to marry his partner Vincent Giannetto. After an in-service day, Griffin was called into the office of School President Father James McCloskey with Principal Jeffrey Danilak, where Father McCloskey told him if he went through with getting married to Giannetto he would be terminated. Griffin and Giannetto continued with their plans and applied for a marriage license. Griffin was terminated the same day. Griffin’s firing is part of a disturbing trend. Fifteen LGBT teachers own been fired from Catholic schools in the past two years alone.
“Michael Griffin
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Kathleen Miles is the executive editor and cofounder of Noema Magazine. She can be reached on Twitter at @mileskathleen.
A Southern California human who taught at a Catholic elevated school for 17 years was fired days after he married his partner.
Students say Ken Bencomo, 45, was one of the most beloved teachers at St. Lucy’s Priory High School, an all-girl school in Glendora, Calif.
Bencomo and his partner Christopher Persky, 32, were one of the first couples to line up on July 1 at the San Bernardino County Assessor-Recorder’s Office to get married after the U.S. Supreme Court dictated a ban on same-sex marriage as unconstitutional.
That same sunlight, the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin ran a front-page photo and online video of the newlyweds celebrating their marriage.
Last week, St. Lucy’s students started talking on social media about the absence of Bencomo from their fall schedules. When they suspected the teacher had been fired, former student Brittany Littleton, 23, started a petition on Change.org to get Bencomo re-hired. As of 11 a.m. PST on Thursday, the petition had over 8,500 signatures.
The petition describes Bencomo and his involvement in the school:
He is a
Gay Teacher Fired by Catholic School Loses Lawsuit
A federal appeals court has dominated against a Catholic school educator in New York who was fired after showing he was gay and intended to marry his boyfriend, in a verdict that solidifies the right of religious schools to discriminate in who they hire under the First Amendment.
Cody Butler, the plaintiff in the cases, applied for a faculty position teaching English and social studies at St. Stanislaus Kostka Catholic Academy in Queens back in 2015. In his application letter, he said that learning at the school would be “a way of enacting my faith, to teach in a Catholic setting.”
Butler interviewed for the job and was hired in August 2015. But after attending an orientation session for new teachers on Sept. 1, Butler objected to some of the remarks made during the session and wrote a letter to the school’s principal expressing his concerns, reports Gay Metropolis News.
“I am concerned about my position within the diocese and school. The tones of the speakers were strident at times and I cannot reveal if I would be accepted. I am gay and plan on marrying my boyfriend eventually, and after being told
Diocese was justified in firing gay educator, rules federal appeals court
June 3, 2025
May 9, 2024
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NEW YORK – In a reversal of a 2021 decision, a federal appeals court has ruled that a Catholic school in the Diocese of Charlotte, North Carolina, was justified in firing a substitute teacher over his same-sex relationship. Lonnie Billard, the educator, sued Charlotte Catholic High School and the Diocese of Charlotte in 2017 for firing him from his learning position after the school found out about his wedding to another dude, which he posted about on Facebook. In September 2021, U.S. District Decide Max Cogburn sided with Billard, decree that Charlotte Catholic High School and the Diocese of Charlotte violated his constitutional rights – a decision the school and diocese appealed. On May 8, the appeal was successful. “We conclude that because Billard played a vital role as a messenger of CCHS’s faith, he falls under the ministerial exception to Title VII,” Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Pamela Harris stated in her ruling. “Accordingly, we reverse the district court’s arrange with instructions to enter judgment for CCHS.” Billard has
Refuting Fr. Martin on “Discrimination” and Gay Catholic Teachers
Welcome to The Counsel of Trent Podcast, a movie of Catholic Answers.
Hey, everyone. Welcome to The Counsel of Trent Podcast. I’m your host, Catholic Answers apologist Trent Horn. And it’s May, which means that teacher contracts are usually up for renewal at Catholic schools, which means you often catch news stories about teachers at Catholic schools creature fired quote unquote, for being gay.
Now, in today’s episode I’m going to address Father James Martin’s argument that this constitutes unjust discrimination, and so it’s wrong. But before I do that, please take a moment to like the video, subscribe to our channel so you don’t miss our content, and you support other people find out about us. All right, so as I said, there have been many cases of Catholic schools firing teachers and other staff for being in same-sex relationships. Here’s just a few examples.
An openly gay teacher is out of a job after posting pictures of her wedding.
Local officials say they were fired for entity gay, after both recently got engaged to their same-sex partners.