School Administrator Fired For Supporting Gay Marriage

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aprilfloyd said:
or at least try to modernise the church’s teaching and not allow the orthodox/radical position to prevail and prejudice or discriminate against ordinary people
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What in this sentence do you mean by “modernise”?
 
aprilfloyd said:
or at least try to modernise the church’s teaching and not allow the orthodox/radical position to prevail and prejudice or discriminate against ordinary people
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You share the thoroughly erroneous view - along, sadly, with many other ill-catechized Catholics - that the Church can change teachings which are based on Natural Law. She cannot.

I don’t see any point in belonging to a Church that alters its teaching according to the changing whims of society. I want to know that the Truth promulgated by my Church is eternal.

The school was absolutely within its rights to fire an employee who well knew that what he was saying was against Church teaching.
 
Good call. Should be more of this taking place in our Catholic schools.
 
fix said:
I wonder what influence he had on students? Did he teach his erroneous views of truth?
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This is an interesting point. While most people do not accept the teachings of the church in their every exact letter, on this point he seems diametrically opposed to the church - in a worst case scenario you could have years of students started out in life with the idea that the truth is subject to the whim of the current political climate.

I very much hope we can assume the best of this person before this event.
 
ephesians4 said:
This is an interesting point. While most people do not accept the teachings of the church in their every exact letter, on this point he seems diametrically opposed to the church - in a worst case scenario you could have years of students started out in life with the idea that the truth is subject to the whim of the current political climate.

I very much hope we can assume the best of this person before this event.
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Regardless of what he may have taught what we do know is that his current actions are a scandalous example for young people. As is said the measure of humility is obedience.
 
Regular_Atheist said:
If a teacher gets criticized/fired for opposing gay marriage, it means there’s an evil homosexual agenda taking over the school system and that religious freedom is dying.

If a teacher gets fired for supporting same-sex marriage, it’s a righteous, moral thing to do.

All-righty, then. 🤷
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This does raise a point.

Posters seem to agree, it’s all right for a Catholic school fire someone who said something seeming to support gay marriage on his personal blog.

But what if a secular university administrator, who is Catholic, posts anti-gay comments on the CAF forums (e.g., things like “perverts,” “sickos,” “mentally ill”)? If the university thinks this is harmful to the mission of the institution, shouldn’t they be able to fire that person as well?

I don’t see a difference.
 
signit said:
This does raise a point.

Posters seem to agree, it’s all right for a Catholic school fire someone who said something seeming to support gay marriage on his personal blog.

But what if a secular university administrator, who is Catholic, posts anti-gay comments on the CAF forums (e.g., things like “perverts,” “sickos,” “mentally ill”)? If the university thinks this is harmful to the mission of the institution, shouldn’t they be able to fire that person as well?

I don’t see a difference.
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Okay, the obvious difference is the blogger Moroski was posting a blog under his name.

I have heard this discussed before, per social media and message boards, often with a perceived degree of anonymity and that is not always so in fact, people are more likely to make snarky comments.
 
BroomWagon said:
Okay, the obvious difference is the blogger Moroski was posting a blog under his name.

I have heard this discussed before, per social media and message boards, often with a perceived degree of anonymity and that is not always so in fact, people are more likely to make snarky comments.
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Thanks for the reply. Obviously, that’s one big difference.

But, if the administrator at the secular university posted the comments under their real name, wouldn’t that be the same thing?

Shouldn’t some higher-up be allowed to say, “Look, this person is an administrator at our institution, and they posted (this and this) on a forum under their real name. This is someone our students expect to carry out our policies; our policies include maintaining a safe environment and opposing bullying and harassment, and if this person uses this kind of language, that is not furthering the mission of the institution”?
 
signit said:
Thanks for the reply. Obviously, that’s one big difference.

But, if the administrator at the secular university posted the comments under their real name, wouldn’t that be the same thing?

Shouldn’t some higher-up be allowed to say, “Look, this person is an administrator at our institution, and they posted (this and this) on a forum under their real name. This is someone our students expect to carry out our policies; our policies include maintaining a safe environment and opposing bullying and harassment, and if this person uses this kind of language, that is not furthering the mission of the institution”?
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I think there are cases like this, if you go through this thread, I think someone even posted a link to that kind of story.
 
BroomWagon said:
I think there are cases like this, if you go through this thread, I think someone even posted a link to that kind of story.
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Right, the link in post #26, which I just saw.

Still, the link says, “If teachers are not permitted to express their moral and political beliefs during their free time on their private Facebook pages, should they be permitted to express their beliefs on blogs?”

In other words, Christian and Catholic teachers should be allowed to express their beliefs on blogs and not be fired, but a Catholic institution should be allowed to fire someone for the same thing?
 
BroomWagon said:
Okay, the obvious difference is the blogger Moroski was posting a blog under his name.

I have heard this discussed before, per social media and message boards, often with a perceived degree of anonymity and that is not always so in fact, people are more likely to make snarky comments.
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But the example I gave (the article from AFTAH) was also posted on the teacher’s Facebook wall, so was posting under his name. What he said was far more offensive than what this pro-gay teacher said, yet people were outraged when he was fired because they believed it was in opposition to his right to freedom of speech and religious freedom. This is true. I just fail to understand why it’s okay to fire someone if they state an opinion you disagree with. It makes me think that members of the religious right who complain about their religious freedom and freedom of speech being taken away don’t actually care about either of those things, but instead value ‘Christian freedom’ and the right to make comments they agree with rather than universal freedom of speech for all. It’s just hypocrisy. The “religious right” seem to be as bad as the “homo-fascists” - they just never get much of a chance to prove it. 🤷
 
Regular_Atheist said:
BI just fail to understand why it’s okay to fire someone if they state an opinion you disagree with.
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I think we need to make a distinction between private schools and government-funded schools.

One of the things which make Catholic schools distinctive are the values they teach. It is not a value-free environment. A common philosophy in many, perhaps most, Catholic school systems is that the teachers and staff of the school are role models for students. This applies the behavior of teachers and staff inside the school, and outside the school in the wider world as well. That is why employment contracts at many, if not most, Catholic schools have a clause which requires the employee to vow they will not oppose Catholic teachings in their words or behavior. The vice-principal of the Ohio school was fired because he violated his contract.

Government-funded schools, however, are required to be more value-neutral. And the teachers and staff are not required, as part of their contract, to uphold certain values or beliefs. Regardless of whether a public school teacher posts online that he favors gay marriage or if he posts online that he opposes gay marriage, it doesn’t matter.
 
Dale_M said:
I think we need to make a distinction between private schools and government-funded schools.

One of the things which make Catholic schools distinctive are the values they teach. It is not a value-free environment. A common philosophy in many, perhaps most, Catholic school systems is that the teachers and staff of the school are role models for students. This applies the behavior of teachers and staff inside the school, and outside the school in the wider world as well. That is why employment contracts at many, if not most, Catholic schools have a clause which requires the employee to vow they will not oppose Catholic teachings in their words or behavior. The vice-principal of the Ohio school was fired because he violated his contract.

Government-funded schools, however, are required to be more value-neutral. And the teachers and staff are not required, as part of their contract, to uphold certain values or beliefs. Regardless of whether a public school teacher posts online that he favors gay marriage or if he posts online that he opposes gay marriage, it doesn’t matter.
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I’ll take your word for it, I guess. 🤷

I still think it’s rather odd to punish someone for having an opinion, though, regardless of where they work. When I consider this, though, I’d imagine it happens all the time. Lots of jobs would require you to have certain opinions. I guess that total freedom of speech could never really exist. 🤷
 
There are definitely hot-button issues in the public schools too. What if you made some sort of tirade against gun control or something? It could happen. School Integration, more of a thing of the past but how about if a public school teacher was making statements about Muslims in the school system?

A bit similar, is a St. Paul Minnesota police officer wearing a Hijab Muslim woman’s clothes: minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2013/02/08/news/st-paul-officer-hijab-costume?refid=0 Looks like it is under investigation but we often hear of stories, person let go of their job because they did something over the top.

Also, this is not a mere opinion Moroski was stating, it was an opinion acutely against Catholic Teaching, a non-negotiable issue. It would be a bit like coming out in favor of abortion though lower on the list of non-negotiables than abortion.

Also, social media, blogs, people communicate these ways, he could have had a rapport with some students for all we know and this could be seen as a negative influence.
 
Regular_Atheist said:
I’ll take your word for it, I guess. 🤷

I still think it’s rather odd to punish someone for having an opinion, though, regardless of where they work. When I consider this, though, I’d imagine it happens all the time. Lots of jobs would require you to have certain opinions. I guess that total freedom of speech could never really exist. 🤷
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I get the point Dale made. It’s a matter of whether they breached their contract and not necessarily about their opinion.

Certainly, total freedom of speech cannot exist as long as there are laws and contracts.
 
kelvinf said:
I get the point Dale made. It’s a matter of whether they breached their contract and not necessarily about their opinion.

Certainly, total freedom of speech cannot exist as long as there are laws and contracts.
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I perfectly understand why it happened. I just think it shows that total freedom of speech doesn’t actually exist, and probably can’t exist.
 
The purpose of a Catholic School is to provide a Catholic education that teaches the students their academic subjects as well as their Catholic theology. Catholic theology is opposed to gay marriage. As an administrator there is a responsibility to know the faith and uphold it. Purposefully posting disagreement over a known Catholic teaching on a public venue using your name pretty much tells me he knew what might happen and was prepared to pay the price in order to speak his opposition to a Catholic teaching he did not support. Why did he want to work there is my question. By the way, earlier this week I started a thread over this same story:
forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=754731
In case you want to see some others point of view.
 
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