A Catholic school in the US state of Georgia is facing a discrimination lawsuit for sacking a teacher who entered into a same-sex marriage.
Despite working to protect its Catholic ethos, Mount de Sales Academy in Macon, has been served with legal papers arising from the 2014 dismissal of music teacher Flint Dollar, after he informed school authorities of his forthcoming same-sex wedding.
Dollar had earlier made his case known to the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which concluded, after its own investigation that the issue was one of discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation, despite the school’s Catholic ethos and teaching on marriage as that between one man and one woman.
Mount de Sales has countered by issuing a statement insisting it did not dismiss Dollar because he is gay.
America’s Cardinal Newman Society has leapt to the defence of Mount de Sales, with its president, Patrick Reilly, describing the lawsuit as “a grave threat to Catholic education”.
“A Catholic school exists for the very purpose of teaching the faith and forming young people for God,” Reilly said. “The implication is that our religion itself, rooted in love and true concern for the good of the person and the common good, is discriminatory because it upholds standards of morality and natural law.
“The argument being made in this suit, that a Catholic school’s commitment to upholding Catholic teaching on marriage is discriminatory toward homosexual employees, is a grave threat to Catholic education.”
Georgia’s Diocese of Savannah also issued a statement in defence of Mount de Sales, saying it “supports the decision of the Board of Trustees at Mount de Sales Academy in Macon not to employ Mr Flint Dollar for the 2014-2015 school term”.
