Saint Joseph, the Roman Catholic high school in Indiana that Presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg attended in his teens years, has a policy against hiring educators in same-gender relationships, according to HuffPost.
That effectively means that while Buttigieg can run for the highest office in the country, the South Bend Mayor couldn't work for his own alma mater because of his marriage with Chasten Buttigieg.
“The Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend (in Indiana) requires our educators to adhere to Catholic teachings on the respect for the dignity of all persons and on marriage as the union of one man and one woman,” diocese spokeswoman Jennifer Simerman told HuffPost in an e-mail.
Simerman says that people who experience “same-sex inclinations” deserve sensitivity and compassion, but “the issue is about persons who enter into ‘same-sex marriages’ or same-sex relationships.”
She goes on to say that same-gender relationships are “incompatible with the mission of the Catholic school educator” as well as suggesting a hostile teaching environment for any students that might happen to be transgender. “Educators are expected to encourage all students to accept their own bodies with their biological sex as God created them,” wrote Simerman.
Employment discrimination against LGBTQ people is still legal in many parts of the US, including Indiana. "Only 21 states have laws that explicitly ban discrimination based on sexual orientation, and only 20 of those also include gender identity," reports The Advocate. The Equality Act hopes to rectify that.
Buttigieg has not commented on his high school's stance. HuffPost reports that Buttigieg spoke in an Economics class at Saint Joseph as recently as 2015.
