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These Catholic School Students Have A Lot Of Love For Their Gay Teacher
These high school students know a thing or two about love.
Students at V.J. and Angela Skutt Catholic High School in Omaha, Nebraska, are speaking out in support of an English teacher and speech team coach who was told his contract would not be renewed after he informed the school he was engaged to his boyfriend.
Matthew Eledge has been teaching at the high school since 2010, the Associated Press reports. According to KETV, Skutt Catholic President Jon McMahon defended the decision in a letter to the school community.
“If a staff member cannot commit to Catholic church teachings and doctrines, he or she cannot continue to be on staff at Skutt Catholic,” he wrote, according to KETV.
But the students at the school are not happy to hear that their beloved teacher has to leave.
KETV reported that during the school’s annual fundraising walk, some students wore T-shirts that presented the Omaha Catholic school with a message and a challenge.
“I support Mr. Eledge,” the shirts read. The Human Rights Campaign logo was on the front, and on the back, the shirts quoted Jesus’ words from John 13:34: “Love one another as I have loved you.”
“We can’t force a change, but we can inspire a change,” Skutt student Darya Kaboli-Nejad told KMTV.
Over 95,000 people have signed a Change.org petition to show their solidarity with Skutt students.
Kacie Hughes, who the AP reports is a close friend of Eledge’s and helps coach the school’s speech team with him, started the petition. In the online document, she called Eledge “a living example of what it means to be a SkyHawk,” the school’s mascot.
Eledge told BuzzFeed that that he was fully aware of the risks of working at a Catholic school as a gay man.
“It always was a bit fearful for me to work in that environment,” he said.
Omaha has an anti-bias ordinance on the books that protects LGBT people from workplace discrimination. But experts told the AP that the school is likely protected by a religious exception.
Skutt Catholic High School and Eledge did not immediately respond to requests for comment. In a statement, Deacon Timothy F. McNeil of the Archdiocese of Omaha said, “I can confirm: Mr. Eledge is not returning to Skutt Catholic H.S. next year.”
These high schoolers certainly aren’t alone. Studies show that the majority of American Catholics don’t agree with the church’s official stance on gay marriage. The Public Religion Research Institute found that 61 percent of white Catholics and 60 percent of Hispanic Catholics in America support allowing gay and lesbian couples to tie the knot.
Younger Catholics are especially likely to favor legalizing same-sex marriage. A Pew Research Center study found that three-quarters of Catholics under the age of 30 support same-sex marriage.
For Hughes, Catholicism’s strong tradition of social justice far outweighs church doctrine towards homosexuality. She sees Eledge’s firing as discrimination.
In her petition, she writes:
When Mr. Eledge, or any other teacher, becomes engaged, what they do in their private life is between themselves and God. Not for us to assume or judge. Furthermore, if [the school fires] Mr. Eledge for engaging in a same-sex relationship, they must avoid discrimination. They will need to fire any single teacher who is living with their partner or engaging in sexual activity, any divorced person who has remarried without an annulment, or any married couple using contraceptives.
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