Florida Teacher FIRED For Being Gay

Fake Democrat Concern Troll thread.

I went thru 16 years of catholic school (yes, including a catholic university). Catholicism is almost an ethnic thing and I struggle to no reflexively refer to myself as catholic, but in fact I've had nothing to do with catholicism in over 15 years. My social network over the years of course is full of catholics of all intensities and often articles like these about gay and lesbian teachers being terminated when their catholic school can no longer ignore their relationships are often posted.

I no longer have any sympathy for these folks. This was a Seventh Day Adventist school. You're gay, you chose to play russian roulette with your job, knowing that it was inevitable that your personal life would come to light and you would be terminated for it. What did you expect? Are they jerks? Absolutely, but that's no secret and when someone tells you who they are you, believe them. They're not going to be shamed into changing their backwards doctrine over you. I don't get it, is this a martyrdom thing? Screw them, go find a school that respects you as a whole person.

This has happened to me at every single FL community college at which I've taught (a total of 3). I was out and continued to be out and they continued to find reasons to get rid of me. At all of them, certain administrators (provost, dean, department chair) were closeted and they were afraid I would out them, so I had to go.

It's a shame -- I really loved teaching at that level because I too came up from nothing, but I refused to go back in the closet. And what breaks my heart is that my students really loved me.

None of these were religious schools, BTW. They were public schools and I taught political science.

Everyone needs to be out, IMHO. No excuses.

i want to sit on his face

I'm from Canada and it's hard to believe that this is happening in the 21 Century. God bless this man and all support to him!

I attended a Seventh Day Adventist school, so not surprised. Like the poster upthread said, they state their position loudly and clearly; it's explicitly spelled out in the students handbook, additionally, every student and parents sign it, and agree to adhere to it.

FYI, the school he was fired from is the lower grades section of the one I attended; Forest Lake Academy.

He's really nice looking.

He looks like Ed Burns

[quote]"The irony is that, as Christians, we like to say, 'Everyone belongs. Come as you are and follow Jesus,'" he added. "But then if they find something they don't agree with, you're thrown out."

He's cute, but obviously not the sharpest tool in the shed.

That filthy queer deserves to be fired. I hope they take his kids before he molests them.

Why live in a place with zero protections? Why teach in an obviously inhospitable environment? Unless you've dedicated yourself to overturning this nonsense, you're better off looking for work in a more supportive environment.

R11 Maladjusted...….to put it mildly!

R13 = Severely irony-challenged, to put it mildly.

Andrew Gillum needs to cum to this guy's defense.

I've got a job for him...

Also - what the fuck are you screeching about R1? Who is exactly is the troll here?

So, did they also go after the teachers who were engaged in pre-marital hetero sex?

Did some guy pretend to be gay and get blown? Is that like a real job?

Religious people problems.

$49K a year? Wow, so poor.

Is his last name pronounced "arouse?"

Why is he surprised that a conservative Christian school would fire him after he comes out as gay?

He was flaunting his sexuality in Florida.

This happens in private religious schools which are not bound to employ people whose views subvert their mission. Duh. As for Seventh-day Adventists, they are cultists who ought to be destroyed.

This sort of thing will soon end up in court.

Can a man be fired just because he’s gay or can a religious organization do whatever it wants?

Yes! Now THAT is how you do it.

Seventh Day Adventists are an odd bunch. I have doubts about their longevity claims.

He was part of a NYT article about adoption in 2017

Does he have an OnlyFans?

This is a portent of things to cum you silly faggots!

R5 But does God endorse The Seventh-Day-Adventists?

First, I was startled by the quality of the article and saw that the source was not some local newspaper or gay media source but Newsweek. Facts, supported, logically presented, the author of the article not at its epicenter...nothing very special, or it shouldn't be, but it stands out as unusual in a good way (which is rather sad in a larger sense.)

I'm of mixed mind because there are two main points to this. One, as others have said, is to expect trouble if you're a gay teacher working for a religious school. The other is that I support him entirely in pointing out that a religious school that takes loads of money from the government must only accept that money of condition of accepting a different set of rules. When they accept government money they must accept government requirements for non-discrimination against students and against employees. Calling them out on this is the right thing to do even if the climate of the moment is not in his favor. Good for him.

Was he "asking for trouble"? Maybe. In the sense of taking a job with a religious school, with appearing in an interview that discussed him being gay and a teacher. But in the end, risking trouble is not the same as deserving trouble. Not at all. Good for him, and also for the simplicity and logic of his arguments: If you take another man's money you must obey his rules applies not just to a religious school's ability to fire a teacher but to the school itself when it takes government money and accepts non-discimination policies.

[quote]Can a man be fired just because he’s gay or can a religious organization do whatever it wants?

A man can be fired just because he's gay in 29 U.S. states.

You can’t work as a teacher or employee of an explicitly religious school and openly and unrepentantly engage in behavior that that church teaches is sin. You can’t be employed by a religious entity while openly undercutting its core sacred teaching.

“ Can a man be fired just because he’s gay or can a religious organization do whatever it wants?”

Yes, In a 7-to-2 decision, the Supreme Court ruled in Our Lady of Guadalupe School v. Morrissey-Berru that the “ministerial exception” – a legal doctrine that shields religious employers from anti-discrimination lawsuits – foreclosed the adjudication of two discrimination lawsuits brought by Catholic school teachers.

I don't feel like clicking on the article, is this like the case where that gay who taught at a Catholic school was fired for being gay, because if so then I don't care about his plight. Being gay and signing up to teach at a religious school is like being black and signing up to teach a KKK training program. When you willingly decide to immerse yourself in an environment where discrimination against who you is the norm you can't go crying when you get discriminated against. You get what you pay for.

[quote] A man can be fired just because he's gay in 29 U.S. states.

After the recent SCOTUS ruing (regarding the parachute instructor fired for being gay), those laws are unconstitutional. Religious organizations are, however, exempt.

It’s not that it’s unconstitutional. Bostock is based on statutory interpretation, Title VII, not the Constitution.

He's cute except for the silly hair.

But, in general stay away from organized religion. It's all about mankind getting together and celebrating a shared ideal and that means there is less tolerance for those who have a different idea.

[quote] It’s not that it’s unconstitutional. Bostock is based on statutory interpretation, Title VII, not the Constitution.

Semantics. The main point is that SCOTUS says those laws cannot be enforced

"None of these were religious schools, BTW. They were public schools and I taught political science."

Well, then, R3, you should take legal action. Public schools cannot fire teachers for being gay, period. It's blatant discrimination.

R34 is our DL churchy who tells gays to be chaste and follow God.

If they receive any government funding or tax breaks, then this should be illegal.

And if not, unless they hold all employees to all standards of their religion - including pre-marital sex, divorce, infidelity - then this really should have no basis.

It's only the gay part that they routinely go after. That is not a standard if they only react to one thing - it's a bias and discrimination.

This is so gay! I’ll sue! 🏳️‍🌈 😡

While it is not a sin to be gay, but it is a sin to engage in homosexual acts. When one is gay, one is called to live a life of celibacy.

This is already fucked up, but the fact there are no protections for LGBT people being discriminated against work in some of the US states is fucked up on a level I can't even comprehend. Absolutely disgusting.

So - if they are going to be purists about it - here are some other things that need to be investigated by all employees:

1) Eating pork or shellfish (that's going to be hard in Florida) 2) Celebrating any holidays besides the Sabbath - so any teacher with Christmas decorations should be fired, too 3) Tea, coffee, tobacco or alcohol consumption 4) Watching competitive sports or non-religious television

At the end of the day - what did he do? He adopted a boy and provided a home for him. He wasn't in some raw dog scat gay porn.

Florida is a right-to-work state; in other words, you have a right to work and they have a right to fire you "for any reason or no reason." If you don't believe me, look it up. So everyone with a job is at risk of being fired on the spot.

Just sayin'.

I realized religion was bullshit before I realized I liked boys. My parents had to bribe me to go to church by the time I was 9. This is like jumping into the tiger cage at the zoo and then wondering why you got bitten. See also, living in Florida.

R47, that does not include reason prohibited by law.

Gurrrrllll that hair.

R40, it's not semantics, constitutional assessments have significantly greater sociopolitical heft than statutory assessments.

He’s lovely inside and out. That article about him adopting his foster son Made me tear up. He’s prolly more of a true Christian than any of the admin at that dumb school

While instances like this break my heart, and are actually quite silly (I recall some poll years back that showed gay men are largely favored by students), part of me thinks it's futile at this point to even get on the soapbox. The fact is, most American's opinions on these matters are changing and largely supporting gay and lesbian people, and on the other hand, people in American are largely ditching organized religion. This school can fight against gays all it wants, but eventually their resources will dry up as more and more people stay away. And there are so many people and orgs that, at the very least don't want to impinge on gay people's lives, if not actually outright support them, that instances like this will largely have any social impact.

R53 - yeah, it is going to change some of the students' opinions for sure.

Gee, R49 -- are you as dim as all that?

They never, ever, EVER tell you or put in your file that they fired you because you were black, gay, too old, etc. Thus you never get fired for anything prohibited by statute. DA DA! See how that works?

Nice try, though. BTW, don't move to Florida. This state is chock full of crooked shysters and they would chew you up and spit you out before you even knew what hit you.

He’s attractive which makes this news 100 times more upsetting

[quote]While it is not a sin to be gay, but it is a sin to engage in homosexual acts. When one is gay, one is called to live a life of celibacy.

▲ Currently R44, but someone uses socks to defecate pretty much this exact statement onto every thread of this kind.

R44 needs to get fucked.

We don't do mythology here, Mary.

It seems like such a foolhardy thing to do.

Part of me wonders if he got tired of working for them, found another job at another school, and decided to go out with a bang. He must have known he would be fired immediately after that article came to their attention.

The Seventh-Day Adventists were the last denomination with which I sojourned before I left organized religion in the middle 1990s. Soon thereafter I became a skeptic... then an atheist, and now I'm an antitheist.

My church adored me; the pastor and head deacon wanted me to teach, but I could not make myself do that. For me, the pursuit of religious "Truth" ™ was a singular activity I carried out across decades; somehow there was something about it which made it seem less than honest to really propagate it to others, so I did very little of that. As the situation with the SDAs developed, to teach would have forced me into open dishonesty about who I was, and I wasn't going to do that. Not anymore.

The small church I attended was afflicted with an internal interpretive culture war, with the sides in the conflict approximating 'liberal' and 'conservative.' The 'liberals' were the Conference-trained pastor and the deacons; the 'conservatives' were certain members of the church's laity. These latter were fanatics, extreme about everything - the diet, biblical interpretation, standards of conduct, etc. Both sides existed in uneasy harmony in a single congregation.

The pastor and the deacon wanted to baptize me into the SDA congregation; they hoped I could be persuaded into some sort of leadership or teaching position, and this was, I suppose, one of the steps along the way. I'd already been baptized nearly twenty years previously, by a body of charismatic Southern Baptists (the same group to which my aunt and uncle, who had adopted Asian refugees, belonged. Some of you here may have read the story when I posted it). I had a very frank talk with the pastor and the deacon, and told them I was gay; could I still be accepted and baptized into the church? They both affirmed that, yes, I could, and that this was one of those areas in which the church was still growing. Neither claimed to be able to definitively claim that homosexuality was wrong. But...

Confidentially, they told me that I would have to keep that side of myself secret from the rest of the church, especially the fanatical fundamentalist Adventist couple, M--- and C-----, who would probably convene something like a church trial for my expulsion if they found out. While I was impressed with the apparent tolerance of the pastor and deacon, to the extent that I did indeed consent to be baptized, I did not stay with the church. Later I heard there'd been the equivalent of a leadership coup coming from the conservatives; they'd seized control of the church, and formally separated from the SDA Conference. The Conference, understandably, no longer continued to foot the bills for the continued rental of the church property, which soon closed. The group which followed the extremists, rented a unit in a local strip mall storefront, where they held services for awhile until finally splintering and going their own way.

Whenever this kind of subject comes up, there's always the trolls who speak of it as some kind of formal contract, or business model: 'these were the terms to which you agreed when you joined; they're perfectly justified to throw you out.' This Adventist teacher may have come in under something like the same factional mixed-messaging I experienced - tacit acceptance by the tolerant, as long as it didn't openly come to the attention of the intolerant. He has my sympathies.

People are deluding themselves when they believe gays are "accepted".

Is his adopted son's name "Nestor"?

R60 really interesting! Thanks so much for sharing that. R61, that statement isn't supported by current social data.

No one should be allow to fire someone for being gay.

full stop.