A lesbian teacher fired on her wedding
day for marrying her partner of 14 years spoke out about the incident
on Tuesday.
Shortly after Tippi McCullough and Barb
Mariani tied the knot in New Mexico, McCullough, who has taught
English at Mount St. Mary Academy, a Catholic all-girls school, for
15 years, received a phone call from the school principal, who
reportedly offered McCullough the option of resigning her post or
being fired.
At a press conference in Little Rock,
Arkansas organized by the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the nation's
largest LGBT rights advocate, McCullough said that she was
“devastated.”
“When I received the phone call of my
firing, I was devastated,” McCullough
said. “The first thought that went through my mind was how
hurt I was that my 15-year commitment had been reduced to a mere
label.”
McCullough said that colleagues at St.
Mary Academy knew of her sexual orientation and that it had not been
a problem until she married last Wednesday. She said that she would
like to receive an apology from school officials.
More than 50,000 people have signed an
HRC online petition calling on the school “to commit to ending
discrimination against the school's LGBT employees and to apologize
for the way Tippi was treated.”