CATHOLIC TEACHER WITH GAY SON REFUSES TO SIGN ANTI-GAY CONTRACT

In March, we reported here at Bilerico on a new anti-LGBT provision that the Catholic Archdiocese of Cincinnati, Ohio inserted into its teacher contracts for next year.

The provision forbids educators not just from coming out as gay or marrying a same-sex spouse, but even from publicly expressing support for LGBT equality, both at school and in their personal lives.

For at least one educator -- a mother of a gay son -- this attempted silencing was the last straw: she refused to sign the contract, choosing instead to end her fourteen-year teaching career with the Cincinnati Archdiocese. The Cincinnati Enquirer reports:

Veteran Catholic teacher Molly Shumate stared at the Cincinnati Archdiocese contract for next school year and thought of her son.

She remembered when a nervous Zachery Shumate, a teenager at the time, approached her and revealed his homosexuality. His revelation prompted the first-grade teacher to give him a hug, telling her boy she would always love and support him.

So when the new teachers' contract - strictly forbidding public support of homosexuality - was handed to her earlier this year, she was torn...

Shumate (above), whom the paper describes as a "lifelong Catholic and devoted teacher," was reportedly "stunned" by the contract's intrusion into her personal life and the way it restricted her ability to publicly support her son, who is now 22.

"In my eyes there is nothing wrong with my son," she said. "This is what God gave me and what God created and someone I should never be asked to not support."

So Molly knew what she had to do.

SOURCE: THE BILERICO PROJECT