‘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.

KEYWORDS:

• Catholic schools
• lesbian teachers
• education policy
• teacher welfare
• equality rights

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada [430-2017-00047].

Notes on contributors

Tonya D. Callaghan

Tonya D. Callaghan is an Associate Professor with the University of Calgary Werklund School of Education. She taught secondary English for over ten years in Canadian and international schools, in rural and urban settings, and in Catholic and non-Catholic systems. Her second book, Homophobia in the Hallways: Heterosexism and Transphobia in Canadian Catholic Schools, was published in 2018 with the University of Toronto Press. Her research explores Catholic resistance to anti-homophobia/transphobia education in both curriculum and educational policy.

Alix Esterhuizen

Alix Esterhuizen is a high school social studies teacher with the Calgary Board of Education and a Researcher with the Werklund School of Education at the University of Calgary. Her work focuses on public policy, its implementation, and how that policy can best be used to support education for participation in a liberal democracy.