Here’s a wedding wish you don’t hear very often: You’re fired. That’s the message that Tippi McCullough got from the Catholic girl’s school where she taught 45 minutes after she married her partner of 14 years, Barb Mariani.
McCullough and Mariani flew to New Mexico to get married, since they live in Arkansas. Forty five minutes after the ceremony, McCullough got a phone call from a secretary at Mount St. Mary Academy, where she had taught for 15 years, saying if she went through with the wedding, she would lose her job. Of course, it was a bit late by then.
While on her honeymoon, McCullough returned phone calls left by principal Diane Wolfe, who informed McCullough that she had violated terms of her contract that require her to follow Catholic teaching. (Apparently, charity is no longer a Catholic teaching.)
Mariani has pointed out that the school’s contractual agreements are spottily enforced. “What’s upsetting to me is that the morality clause covers birth control, premarital sex and they are certainly not pro-choice,” she says. “It’s disturbing to me that no straight teacher is called in and asked if she’s using birth control or unmarried and having premarital sex with a boyfriend.”
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For her part, Wolfe has reacted with a mixture of defensiveness and defiance. “I was hired to uphold my contractual obligations as a Catholic school administrator and to carry out those functions, as unpleasant as they may be,” she has said. “It seems many are quick to judge my actions as my decision and accuse me of cowardice in the performance of what I was hired to do. Do you not think it took moral courage to carry out and uphold the tenets of the church and the directives of those responsible for giving oversight to those tenets?”
In other words, she doesn’t disagree and she’s not about to lose her job in any case.
Photo credit: ThinkProgress
Charlie in Charge
It really would be interesting to see who is left if they had to kick out anyone on the pill or living in sin. One imagines she spent some of those 14 years living with her partner.
Alfredo
I am so sick and tired of the Catholic Church, I could throw up. I advise all gays NEVER to donate to any so-called Christian organization in this country. They are all bastions of capitalism, fascism and fundamentalism, and mortal enemies of secularism, democracy and social justice.
yaoming
I know it’s what Jesus would have done… not. And at this point, I wonder if even the pope would have.
Scribe38
Wow. This is just wrong on a lot of levels. I attend a Catholic college, because I was able to get into a program sooner than I would have been able to at other universities. I have decided to live openly there and wait for the consequences to fall where they will. In one class I did a power point that showed my partner and I in bed sleeping (a friend took it). No one said I was going to hell or commented negatively. Maybe it would be different if I was an employee, but I know for a fact one of my teachers is a single mother. Maybe each school makes its owns rules. Either way what happened to the teacher was wrong and I hope with public pressure she can get her job back.
Ogre Magi
christians are such jerks
Fitz
Good! Gay people who would be willing to work for the Catholic Church do not deserve our sympathy. This hag was willing to cash their checks for 15 years, helping them make money and spread their word. She only had a problem with it when she was in the site finder.
yaoming
@Fitz: Harsh… but probably true.
2eo
@Fitz: Aye, these uncle toms are the problem incarnate, selfish, arrogant and only thinking of themselves.
These people lend legitimacy to idiotic, outdated ideals.