A lesbian teacher says pregnancy got
her fired from a Catholic school in suburban Detroit, Michigan.
Barbara and Kristen Webb married two
years ago in Canada.
Barbara Webb, a chemistry teacher at
Marian High School, an all-girls high school in Bloomfield Hills, met
with school officials in July to discuss her pregnancy and ask for a
leave of absence.
According to The Detroit Free Press,
Webb was terminated from her job of 9 years in mid August. A letter
informing her of the action did not specify a reason but she said
based on previous conversations with administrators that the firing
was based on a morality clause in her contract which prohibits public
conduct of “lifestyle or actions directly contradictory to the
Catholic faith.”
“That you can't hide a pregnancy from
the public is why I was terminated,” she
told the paper.
She said the school offered her two
choices: Resign with health insurance through the spring semester and
agree to not discuss why she left her job or be fired.
“I really felt like resigning was a
lie; to me, that was willingly leaving,” she said. “I was kind
of compelled to just let people know the truth.”
Webb said she was speaking out to raise
awareness.
“My job can't be saved,” she wrote
on Facebook, “but the torment that the poor LGBT students at Marian
must be feeling, the other LGBT staff, and those that are silenced by
fear can be helped.”
In comments to the paper she added:
“This is definitely not a crusade against the school. This is so
much more than me and Marian. It's letting people know what type of
social injustice is still happening.” (A video report from
Detroit's WXYX is embedded on this page. Visit
our video library for more videos.)