A woman says she was forced to resign from her job as a social ministries coordinator at a Catholic parish in Missouri after her marriage to her female partner was revealed in a newspaper article, The Kansas City Star reports.
Colleen Simon, who was the subject of a profile in The Star news magazine in April, got married to Reverend Donna Simon of St Mark Hope and Peace Lutheran Church in Iowa two years ago. The Star says the Simons do not hold a grudge against the writer who revealed their marriage. While they say they haven’t hidden their marriage, Colleen says she refrained from using language at work that would reveal she is in a same-sex marriage.
The report quotes Simon as saying that “it’s awful, but there are laws, and until that law gets changed in the church, it is what it is.”
Simon, who has battled non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and is three years cancer-free, believes Bishop Robert Finn of the Diocese of Kansas City-St Joseph gave the order to fire her.
In March, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported that a gay vice-principal in Washington State, who says he was fired from Eastside Catholic High School after officials found out he had married his partner, was suing the school and the Archdiocese of Seattle for wrongful termination,
According to the report, Zmuda alleges that Archbishop J Peter Sartain made the decision to dismiss him. The former vice-principal argues that he never served in a religious role, saying his role was “purely administrative.”
Zmuda’s dismissal sparked protests Dec 19, with Eastside students walking out of class or not bothering to show up, chanting, “Keep Mr Z” and “Change the church.” It was reported that students in other Catholic schools in surrounding cities staged sit-ins and other forms of protest in solidarity with Eastside students.
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