Wedding Photos Cost Gay Teacher His Job
The church doesn’t have the right to impose their narrow religious views on their employees, and as such they should not be allowed to discriminate against same sex marriages in a for profit school whose courses are mostly non religious. A high school is not a seminary.
A gay teacher at a Catholic high school in Southern California lost his job after his wedding pictures were published in a local newspaper, according to the teacher’s lawyer.
Ken Bencomo, 45, was fired from St. Lucy’s Priory after marrying his partner of 10 years, the San Bernardino Sun reported.
Officials were aware of Bencomo’s sexual orientation for at least 10 of the 17 years he worked at the school, according to his lawyer Patrick McGarrigle.
“The reason given was that the marriage occurred and the school’s position was that it violated church teachings,” McGarrigle said.
The firing came days after photos of the wedding appeared in a local newspaper. Bencomo and Christopher Persky, 32, were among the first gay couples to line up at the San Bernardino County Assessor-Recorder’s Office to get married following a U.S. Supreme Court decision that cleared the way for same-sex marriages to resume in the nation’s most populous state.