Protesters Rally for Lesbian English Teacher Fired from Arkansas Catholic School

Protesters rallied Monday for a popular English teacher who was fired from a Catholic high school in Arkansas because she married her same-sex partner.

The principal of Mount St. Mary’s Academy in Little Rock notified English teacher and coach Tippi McCullough that she would be fired or forced to resign because her marriage went against church doctrine, according to a Human Rights Campaign press release.

But protesters who marched to urge the school to rehire McCullough say that her personal life should have never been at issue.

"I want Mount girls in there right now to see that we support them no matter what your sexual orientation is," Mount St. Mary graduate Sylene Cortez said, according to ArkansasMatters.com.

McCullough said that she when she spoke with Mount St. Mary’s principal Diane Wolfe. “She told me she never thought the day would come, that I was a great teacher and that she would give me a glowing recommendation if I resigned,” McCullough told the Arkansas Times. “She said her hands were tied when I signed a legal document.”

That document is McCullough’s contract, which has a clause allowing for dismissal if a staff member violates Roman Catholic teaching. When McCullough asked Wolfe how, specifically, she had breached the contract, Wolfe “said she wasn’t going to get into a theological discussion and there was nothing she could do,” McCullough told the newspaper.

McCullough and her wife, Barb Mariani, both said they thought McCullough was singled out for being gay. “They hire people who aren’t Catholic, with a lot of different belief systems,” Mariani told the Times. “What’s upsetting to me is that the morality clause covers birth control, premarital sex and they are certainly not pro-choice. It’s disturbing to me that no straight teacher is called in and asked if she’s using birth control or unmarried and having premarital sex with a boyfriend.” The women also said Wolfe knew of their relationship, although McCullough has never discussed it with students. They had been together 14 years before marrying in New Mexico, where several counties grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples, and McCullough has taught at the school for 15 years.

Protesters said they believed the church was within its right to fire McCullough but that the rules need to change.
"We were taught you know mercy values, which is like the intrinsic dignity and worth of a person, compassion, mercy, all the things that don't fall in line with what has happened," said Chloe Poirot, a protester in support of McCullough.

While Father Jason Tyler of the Little Rock Catholic Diocese said, "We believe that marriage is, always has been and always will be by definition the union of one man and one woman," protesters like Cortez are hope for more inclusivity.

"Encouragement to be more inclusive and more tolerant and accepting of diversity in their student body and their faculty," Cortez said, according to Arkansas Matters.