Diocese dismisses substitute teacher after he announces gay marriage plans

From The Charlotte Catholic News Herald:

A retired dramatics teacher from Charlotte Catholic High School has been told he cannot work as a substitute teacher at the school after he publicly announced he is planning to marry his same-sex partner later this year.

Lonnie H. Billard, who had signed up to be a substitute teacher at the high school and was scheduled to teach during January, wrote on his Facebook page that he and his gay partner were planning to marry in the summer of 2015, according to Diocese of Charlotte spokesman David Hains.

According to Hains, as soon as Charlotte Catholic High School officials learned of his announcement, they informed him he could not work as a substitute teacher because of his opposition to Catholic teaching.

All employees of the diocese agree upon their employment to follow the diocese’s ethics policy and a personnel policy that requires them to conduct themselves in a manner consistent with the teachings of the Catholic Church.

According to the diocesan human resources office, substitute teachers are classified as temporary employees. They have no benefits but they are subject to the same policies as other employees.

“People who work for the Diocese of Charlotte agree that they will not oppose the teaching of the Catholic Church. We cannot and will not employ a substitute teacher who opposes Church teaching,” Hains said in a Jan. 9 statement.

The diocese does not typically comment on personnel matters, but diocesan officials decided to comment in this case after Charlotte area media reported on Billard’s termination. School and diocesan schools office officials directed all inquiries to Hains.

Read the rest.

The Charlotte Observer reports:

Billard’s announcement was made on Facebook earlier in the fall, and he says the decision came directly from the diocese, not the school.

“This was not a decision by Charlotte Catholic High School,” Billard said in an interview with qnotes on Monday. “I had talked with one of the administration officials. He knew [about the announcement]. He didn’t care. He said he knew me to be a good teacher and a good person.”

But, Billard said trouble arose elsewhere.

“Apparently there were a couple teachers there who are super-conservative Catholic,” said Billard, himself a member of the church. “They are not friends of mine on Facebook, but they found out about it and escalated it so it got to the diocese.”

Editorial note: the rest of the Observer piece is a weepy, hand-wringing, breast-beating portrait of a wronged employee who expresses anxiety for all the gay students who fear expulsion simply because they’re gay. It’s a sustained exercise in victim journalism, with fully half of it devoted to quotes by the teacher talking about how this hurt his feelings and that he “never expected to be treated so badly by the diocese.” (Did it ever occur to him that he had violated the terms of his employment? That question never comes up.) It’s a biased, unbalanced journalistic shambles, beginning with the lead sentence: “The local Roman Catholic diocese is in hot water again for anti-LGBT discrimination…”  Reporter Matt Comer, evidently, can write and publish whatever he wants—balance, accuracy and fairness be damned.  End of rant.