A gay teacher has been fired by a Miami
Catholic school after marrying her girlfriend.
First-grade teacher Jocelyn Morffi
married her girlfriend Natasha Hass in the Florida Keys over the
weekend. She returned to work on Wednesday and was fired the
following day.
“This weekend I married the love of
my life and unfortunately I was terminated from my job as a result,”
Morffi wrote on social media. “In their eyes I'm not the right
kind of Catholic for my choice in partner.”
The Miami Herald reported that
roughly 20 parents gathered Friday morning at Saints Peter and Paul
Catholic School to demand an explanation.
“We were extremely livid,” one of
the parents said. “They treated her like a criminal, they didn't
even let her get her things out of her classroom.”
A spokeswoman for the Archdiocese of
Miami said that Morffi had broken her contract under church rules of
conduct. Morffi worked at the school for seven years.
Tony Lima, executive director of LGBT
rights group SAVE, called the firing “shocking.”
“It's important to continue educating
the community that this kind of stuff happens in this day and age.
But it's even more important to pass comprehensive statewide
protections,” Lima said.
According to New
Ways Ministries, more than 70 LGBT people have reported losing
their jobs at Catholic institutions since 2007.