Unwed, Pregnant Teacher Gets Fired, Sues
Man, just when I’d begun to think that maybe, just maybe, we’ve left behind the attitude that women are chattel, I run into this story. I’m not about to defend Michelle McCusker, because it’s not my place. Her private life is her own business. If she fulfills her job as a teacher, and if her students are learning what they’re supposed to be learning, what does it matter if she is having sexual relations with farm animals or anything else on her free time? As long as she is exercising a modicum of discretion, her employer should have no control or influence over how she conducts her private life.
Oh, wait…she was stupid enough to get pregnant, and as we all know, any good Catholic would be within their rights to want to BURN THE WITCH.
NEW YORK (Nov. 22) - The New York Civil Liberties Union has filed a federal discrimination complaint against a Catholic school, charging that it unjustly fired an unmarried teacher for being pregnant.
“I don’t understand how a religion that prides itself on forgiving and on valuing life could terminate me because I’m pregnant and choosing to have this baby,” Michelle McCusker said Monday at a news conference to announce the suit.
The 26-year-old preschool teacher was fired last month from St. Rose of Lima in Queens, according to published reports. The Diocese of Brooklyn also was named in the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission complaint.
“This is a difficult situation for every person involved, but the school had no choice but to follow the principles contained in the teachers’ personnel handbook,” diocese spokesman Frank DeRosa said in a statement.
The handbook says that each teacher must “convey the teachings of the Catholic faith by his or her words and actions.”
Lawyers at the NYCLU, which filed the suit on McCusker’s behalf, argued that administrators enforced the policy in a way that disproportionately affects women.
“The school used her pregnancy as a marker,” attorney Cassandra Stubbs said. “How do they determine if male employees engage in premarital sex?”
Yes, I understand and respect that in some moralities, premarital sex and/or out-of-wedlock pregnancy are both considered sins. But should these be considered grounds for termination of employment when, physiology being what it is, women bear the brunt of carrying the visible physical evidence of such “transgressions”? Men are free to have premarital (or any other kind of) sex, and as long as they don’t get caught and/or no one complains, there are no consequences. God help (pardon the pun) the woman who happens to get pregnant out of wedlock while working for a Catholic school. While her employer may not be able to put her in stocks in the village square or force her to wear a Scarlet Letter (apologies to Nathaniel Hawthorne), she can nonetheless be branded and punished.
BURN THE WITCH!!
OK, so biology isn’t fair, but doesn’t this double standard place an unreasonable burden upon women? A woman can be fired for being pregnant out of wedlock, but a man who impregnates his paramour can avoid consequences if he is discreet about it. After all, he’s not the one carrying around the physical evidence.
To make matters worse, I listened to a spokesman for the Catholic League defending the school’s actions. To say that this troll was not exactly the poster boy for Christian Charity would be something of an understatement. By the time he was finished, you could be forgiven for thinking Michelle McCusker sat at the right hand of Satan. BURN THE WITCH!!!
Unless I’m skipping something I slept through in 10th-grade Biology, Immaculate Conception is a physical impossibility…unless your name is Mary Magdalene. Yes, a man’s contribution to a pregnancy may amount to little more than a squirt, but it’s not as if Ms. McCusker broke into and robbed a sperm bank at gunpoint….
Yes, I can certainly understand where a Catholic school trying to enforce moral standards might have a legitimate issue with Ms. McCusker’s pregnancy. The problem with their terminating her employment, though, is that it simply reinforces the unwritten and unspoken doctrine that women are second-class citizens and the property of men. Of course, that really has been Catholic doctrine, albeit unwritten, for several hundred years, hasn’t it?
Personally, I hope Ms. McCusker is awarded a settlement sufficient to bankrupt not only the school, but the Diocese that runs it. Perhaps then the out-of-touch, moralistic, judgemental White Males who run the Catholic Church will WAKE UP AND SMELL THE CAT LITTER.
Welcome to the 21st century, y’all…now kindly remove your anteriors from your posteriors.
