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‘Too gay to teach’: dismissals of lesbian teachers in select North American Catholic schools
Abstract
This research examines media accounts of teachers in Canada and the United States who were fired or forced from their Catholic schools because they identified as lesbian, highlighting the reality of discrimination in Catholic schools, particularly egregious in their contradiction of non-discrimination legislation. Caught between the religious edicts of the Vatican and the secular laws of the state, Catholic schools in Canada and the United States respond to non-heterosexual students and teachers in contradictory and inconsistent ways, including expulsion, firing, or more subtle forms of exclusion. This study suggests that the issue is not within a country’s legal or policy protections but in the consistent prioritization of Catholic Canonical law through provision of religious exemptions over the rights of staff.
... Additionally, Callaghan and Esterhuizen (2021) explained that LGBT members face discrimination and bullying and are being terminated from employment. On June 15, 2020, the United States Supreme Court handed down a decision that protected the rights of gay, lesbian, and transgender employees, resulting in protection from termination because of sexual orientation and gender. ...
... On June 15, 2020, the United States Supreme Court handed down a decision that protected the rights of gay, lesbian, and transgender employees, resulting in protection from termination because of sexual orientation and gender. This ruling ensured that all LGBT employees could work without fear of being removed, thus creating a safer environment (Callaghan & Esterhuizen, 2021). ...
In the present study, a quantitative correlational design was used to determine the relationship between workplace bullying and burnout among employees in higher education. The instruments used in this study were the Negative Acts Questionnaire-Revised (NAQ-R) and the Maslach Burnout Inventory Educational Survey (MBI-ES). Participants included male and female employees who worked in various academic positions, ranging from support to administrative and faculty members (N = 131). The results indicated that the three factors of workplace bullying were significantly correlated with emotional exhaustion and depersonalization and negatively correlated with personal accomplishment. Additional findings showed that employees had more frequency of top-down bullying than lateral and upwards bullying. These findings indicated that workplace bullying and burnout could happen to anyone in academia, regardless of position or status.
... For more on the dismissal of homosexual teachers from Catholic schools in the US, seeCallaghan et al. (2021). ...
In this paper we focus on the possibility that a paramedic might also be a (legal) sex worker. We consider whether such a possibility is grounds for an employer to dismiss, and/or a professional board to deregister, such a paramedic. To make this determination we consider whether it is ever permissible for an employer to dismiss someone because they are a sex worker. To this end we examine a paradigm case of permissible dismissal for engaging in sex work – that of being employed as a Catholic role model. We argue that the underlying principles that may make this dismissal permissible do not extend to the paramedic profession. We then examine an alternative argument for the permissibility of dismissing a paramedic for being a sex worker – that sex work may undermine public confidence in the profession. We put pressure on this argument, suggesting that professions have a duty to challenge certain biases even if, in doing so, public confidence in the profession may be undermined.
This article discusses research about LGBTQ school leadership and notes differences in participants’ perceptions of treatment in their professional environments. The study employed mixed methods to identify the perceptions and experiences of unfair treatment and discrimination of lesbian and gay public-school administrators working in K–12 settings. A small, purposeful sample of 32 participants reported having experienced varying degrees of unfair treatment or discrimination either in their professional lives or in their private/personal lives. Findings suggest that educational leaders have a role in addressing and preventing unfair treatment and discrimination that contribute to the dissatisfaction and diminished leadership of lesbian and gay administrators serving in K–12 education.
This article uses a queer narrative hermeneutic approach to interpret higher education leadership experiences of not passing. Developed through biographical narrative depictions of personal and professional experiences informed by theoretical studies of curriculum and learning and queer cultures and histories, the article distinguishes among different forms and expressions of passing and not passing within the context of leadership experience in higher education. In addition to offering interpretations of past events and experiences of those events, the article includes depictions of alternative ways to include counternormative sensibilities within the contexts of higher education leadership practices.
In the wake of marriage equality for same-sex couples, many states have introduced and passed laws that provide religious exemptions for certain services and benefits for LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer) persons. The authors use data from a general population survey of Nebraskans as a mixed-methods case study to examine public opinion of religious freedom laws. Drawing on data from both closed-ended (n = 1,117) and open-ended (n = 838) questions, the authors show that opposition to religious freedom laws is quite high, as 64 percent of respondents report that they oppose laws that would allow business owners to deny services to gay men and lesbians. The authors outline how both sides rely on frameworks that are foundational to the American experience: the protection of rights and the capitalist economy. The authors argue that these appeals to broad American values underscore why these bills will continue to be introduced and seen as controversial despite low levels of support.
The article draws on post-positivist policy analysis and social movement theory to explore the impact of law in shaping the politics of social movement claims and discursive construction of same-sex marriage as public policy issue in Canadian and American politics. Using the concept of framing, the article discusses the ways in which lesbian and gay rights claimants in Canada and the USA have framed the issue of same-sex marriage in two landmark North American rulings on same-sex marriage, Halpern (Ontario) and Goodridge (Massachusetts). The article finds that, despite differences in legal policy legacies between Canada and the USA, there is a common rights frame governing lesbian and gay struggles over same-sex marriage. Although working with different legal frameworks, judicial precedents, statutory law and human rights protections, courts reached remarkably similar conclusions about same-sex marriage and largely endorsed nearly all of the elements in the rights frame put forth by lesbian and gay litigants. Despite similarities in the framing of lesbian and gay rights issues in the two countries, the article demonstrates that the central difference in the same-sex marriage debate in Canada and the USA concerns the place of the rights frame within the broader political culture.
Since the late 1970s, the Religious Right has mobilized to oppose the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) movement in the United States. Sociologists have studied the relationship between these two movements as a classic movement-countermovement dynamic, in which the strategies, actions, and framing of one movement impact the other. I analyze the way Religious Right reactive and proactive opposition to gay rights has affected the LGBTQ movement. First, I provide an overview of the literature on the negative impacts of the Religious Right, including the diversion of movement goals, transformation of frames, and marginalization of queer politics. Second, I examine the way Religious Right activism may increase mobilization.
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