Woman Is Fired From Christian School For Having Premarital Sex With Her Husband

[filkertom]

'Cause she's a fornicator. I'm not kidding.

Newlywed Jarretta Hamilton, an elementary school teacher in her late 30s at Southland Christian School in Florida, went to her supervisors last year to be congratulated on her pregnancy and request maternity leave. But things took an unexpected turn when administrators asked just when, exactly, did she conceive? Refusing to bear false witnesses, Hamilton admitted to the prying busybodies that she had become pregnant three weeks before her wedding day.

In response, Hamilton was fired for engaging in "fornication." Conveniently, this also meant that the school was off the hook for paying maternity leave. Then, in an added insult and violation of Hamilton's privacy, her premarital conception was made public to others in the school and parents.

Here's a news story at MSNBC about it as well.

This actually mattered to these people. To the point that this woman lost her job. That's not a theoretical, hypothetical situation. That's a lost job, and a family that's harder to care for.

Apparently, thanks to one SCOTUS decision or another regarding freedom of religion, "morals clauses", or somesuch, this may indeed be perfectly legal.

If so, it means that, just as in cases when a pharmacist refuses to fill a Morning After Pill scrip or a doctor refuses to perform a legal abortion, someone else's "freedom of religion" can trump your right to privacy. And their fear and loathing of sex can cost you your job.

Comments

[ororo]

I find this vile. And ironic.

[joyful.livejournal.com]

I went to a Christian school from 8th grade to 12th grade. While I was there, the 6th grade teacher was fired because he was seen holding hands with another man at the mall.

[aiela.livejournal.com]

Friend of mine in the 80's had her 2nd grade teacher fired for getting pregnant out of wedlock at a public school.

Said friend, when telling me this story in high school, didn't have a problem with it. It was then that I realized she and I should never, ever, ever discuss matters of "morality" or "religion". And 20 years later we still don't. :P

[redaxe.livejournal.com]

I think it sucks, too. But I will note that the relevant SCOTUS opinion, as I recall it, specifically notes that religious-based organizations could apply religious tests to their employees. If it were a secular organization, it'd be so far out of line it'd be off the playing field.

I don't completely agree with that opinion -- hospitals, for example, ought not to have any religious bias at all -- but for schools, both the prospective employees and the parents of prospective students generally know, going in, that the place is biased (or should, based on the place's religious affiliation).

I hope she gets a better job at a place that doesn't have narrowminded bigots running it.

[ldyerzsie.livejournal.com]

Only if you work for a religious institution. Like a Christian School. Work for the Government and no one really cares. Heck I was openly Pagan while working for a pre-school during my 20's and had no bad repercussions.

My parent's aren't at all religious, but they played the game and went to the Important services--major Holy Days and when the pastor's bosses were in town--when she worked for a Lutheran Church.

The nice lady should have just invoked her HIPPA rights and told them it was none of their business. Of course, the former employers are also in violation of HIPPA laws due to spreading around what is essentially private health info.

[mouser.livejournal.com]

Actually like a *church* not a *school* (which has accreditation from the government it has to meet).

This will not end well for them.

[mouser.livejournal.com]

Right to Privacy goes out the window when your response isn't "That's none of your business."

Telling others the reason they fired her was REALLY stupid, though. I think it's something other then "Right to Privacy" and will land the school in all kinds of hot water. Oddly, they don't even have to tell HER why the terminated her employment in FL. I imagine the HR department is kicking the principle in the nuts.

FYI: Their domain "southlandchristianschool.net" expired on 05/11/2010 and is pending renewal or deletion. Wonder when it can get snapped up...

Some review on the place (http://maps.google.com/maps/place?num=100&hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=36C&rlz=1R1GGGL_en___US356&um=1&ie=UTF-8&q=southland+christian+school+fl&fb=1&gl=us&hq=southland+christian+school&hnear=Florida&cid=8064292942464396948&pcsi=8064292942464396948,1&ei=31cWTI7oK4L_8Abs8pieDA&sa=X&oi=local_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBcQnQIwAA).

[mouser.livejournal.com]

Hey, wasn't Christ supposed to be conceived out of wedlock?

[vettecat.livejournal.com]

Aside from their publicizing her private business, I don't think they did anything wrong. It's a religious school; they can require their children's role models to follow their moral code.

[umbran.livejournal.com]

While a crappy situation, this is part of what being in a free country is. "Free," doesn't equate to, "you don't get to do what I find offensive or unreasonable". We all get to make choices, and they sometimes have repercussions.

She was working for a "Christian" school. Did she have any reason to believe that this school did anything other than hold the teachers to a specific high standard of behavior? I won't be at all surprised if her contract held clauses to cover such. Fully informed, she chose to work for them, and then gave them personal information.

[alverant.livejournal.com]

What if she was raped? (She wasn't, but this is all hypothetical.) The bible does not recognize the idea of a woman consenting to have sex. Sex outside of marriage is a sin in christianity, whether you had it willingly or not.

[joyful.livejournal.com]

Now, I admit that I don't like the idea of what happened. However, as somebody who went to a Christian school, most religious institutions require both faculty and students to sign a morality contract or a cod of conduct agreement at the start of each school year. While I don't know the details of this specific case, if she signed one, than the school was within its rights to fire her.

I personally find the school's behavior morally objectionable (Christianity is about forgiveness), I doubt they have done anything illegal.

I also think the situation could have been handled a lot better. And I'd just like to add that honesty does not always mean the same thing as full disclosure.

[shekkara.livejournal.com]

Funny how that forgiveness message is so often conveniently forgotten.

[talonvaki.livejournal.com]

If I were her, I'd have said, "We conceived on our honeymoon! Isn't that romantic?" And then, when the baby was born, claim it was slightly early. I was born 3 weeks early, and my parents had been married for 4 years at the time.

There are times I am very pleased to be a dual citizen...if the US gets too insane, I have another option.

Although, looking at the MSNBC story, I wonder if there isn't something about this that's related to the fact that they are an interracial couple. This is the South we're talking about.

[alverant.livejournal.com]

I noticed that too. Also how many male teachers did they fire for the same reason?

[shockwave77598.livejournal.com]

All she had to do is say "None of your business." Which it wasn't...

[alverant.livejournal.com]

Makes you look suspicious though, like you got something to hide.

[tigertoy.livejournal.com]

When you get down to it, the school has a point. Christian schools (at least the sort of Christian schools that would do this as a matter of policy) exist to brainwash, oh, excuse me, to inculcate morals in their children. Having a teacher who was openly violating those morals would in fact, undermine the message.

This is why Christian schools should not be allowed to exist.

[tcgtrf.livejournal.com]

Phil, *all* schools exist to inculcate what the instructors wish to do, something that the students and their parents can do in half the time, a quarter the cost, and an eighth the hassle.

Knock 'em all to the ground and sow it with salt so they don't come back.

Tom, do you really want us to get into the business of forcing individuals to do things against their moral code? Who's going to yank the burkas off of women or hold a gun to the head of doctors and pharmacists, the cops? Next they'll have lions in Wrigley Field.

Tom T.

Well...

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

That's because it's a lot easier to mouth "family values" than to do the work of supporting families. Families are messy. The people who shout the "family values" crap are the most family-hostile people I've encountered. They attack other people's families in so many ways, it's just appalling. I feel sorry for their God, having to put up with that.

Re: Well...

[tcgtrf.livejournal.com]

At the same time, ysabet, those Christians created a state where we can worship in peace. If you and I lived in some Muslim countries (Iran and some African nations come to mind), we'd live in constant fear of arrest and the death penalty.

Hell, Iran even puts Bah'ai worshippers to death.

We need to be very, very careful about interfering with others' religious pursuits. Not all of us here are agnostics or atheist and that sword has two edges.

Tom T

[johnridley.livejournal.com]

Hey, she's getting off light. If they had their 'druthers, they might want to really follow the bible and stone her to death.

[sidebernie.livejournal.com]

At least they're not being hypocrites? If they didn't fire her, they could be labelled as condoning the behavior. Ok, I suppose they could have censured her short of the firing, but the teacher admitted to violating the Christian code that her employers were promoting. She had to expect _some_ sort of punishment.

I started to ask how she knew the exact date of conception, but as I was typing I thought of at least one way that would be possible, so never mind on that point.

[jenk]

...and how many times do they check how long after the wedding that the wife of a newly-married male teacher gives birth?

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

Religious school. In the South. If she was *considering* *any* nookie before seeing the parson she should've had her resume up to date and been actively looking. This is simple reality.

And no, I don't believe it's right to force one's own morality on another religious institution. Despite the fact that I was the collateral damage of just such a thing - the academy I went to for what passed for middle school for me dumped four of our best teachers for being at a party where alcohol was present.

I did what you do in such a situation: I went back to public school. Much happier for it.

Ideally, no one should be forced to commit an act that goes against their conscience. That includes teatotalling Baptists, orthodox Muslims, Wiccans, Jews, and atheists. You can see that that's gonna cause an Issue.

The solution here is to choose to live among people who are either like-minded or tolerant of your views. Our heroine *should have known* that cranky, stick-in-the-mud uberconservative admins were not gonna like what she did... while I do think what they did to her was over the top, even Jimmy Buffett, happy-go-lucky pagan that he is, agrees: "If you don't want it printed, Don't Do It! Or YOU could end up on that Coconut Telegraph..."

Is it bad? yeah. Is it legal? Probably. Should it be? I'm afraid so. Should we raise a hue and cry and say, bad school? Maybe.

I think the way to deal with such things in general is simply to make it widely known that there are places of tolerance and acceptance and encouragement, and to quietly facilitate the departure of those who want to get the hell out of places whose conditions go against their conscience. Going in and yanking burkahs will just get you shot. Smuggling women out and putting them through school in America? Not only gets you smart, driven women dedicated to the cause of freedom, but reduces the ability of the other guys to breed.

[unclelumpy.livejournal.com]

May the students of said school learn a valuable lesson from this about Christian tolerance and forgiveness... i.e. it's a load of CRAP!

She should get an abortion just to rub it in the motherfucker's faces!

SIGH...

[unclelumpy.livejournal.com]

Okay, okay, I don't mean that... But sometimes they make it REAL damned hard to remember!

[aiela.livejournal.com]

I love the comment on the article that's going on about "Well, she already had five kids by some other man, I guess they were trying to be forgiving when they hired her, and then she goes and does this."

The article clearly states she had five children with her HUSBAND and then was WIDOWED.

Apparently even being a single mother by way of your husband's death makes you trashy. *sigh*

[dornbeast.livejournal.com]

No, it's more that some people need to have somebody to be beneath them, and the moment a likely candidate pops up, they will take any excuse to further denigrate that person, and the facts be damned.

[judifilksign.livejournal.com]

Whether or not I agree on the Christian school's employment policy of terminating the job of someone who did not live up to their moral code, I think it was beyond inappropriate for them to have not only trashed her reputation to her co-workers, but in the entire community by telling the parents of her entire classroom.

Vindictive, and a breach of her privacy.

[starcat-jewel.livejournal.com]

Yes. No matter what your position on the initial termination, there is NO justification for what happened afterwards. The school is certainly not required to tell anyone why they make a hiring or termination decision; if they desperately needed something to tell anxious co-workers or angry parents, "She was found to be in violation of one of our work policies" would have been quite sufficient. Further questions could have been answered by, "It would be a violation of confidentiality to go into details."

[rmeidaking.livejournal.com]

In most states, you're an at-will employee, which means that your employer can fire you at any time, for any reason at all, unless it's one of the big anti-ism reasons. She *might* have a case that this was discrimination against her personal religion, but in general, it's all the employer's choice anyway.

My husband once lost a job as a senior programmer because he posted a link to an irreverent review of the Star Wars movie that came out in 2001 on a company electronic bulletin board. Some anonymous employee took offense at some other article on the same website - not the Star Wars review, but some other random piece of irreverent humor - and filed a complaint. Zero Tolerance took care of the rest, and NSFW became an acronym, possibly not coincidentally.

[mythdude.livejournal.com]

This among many other things inspired my recent post about religion. People claim that religion is losing members because they're "Being seduced by socialism" or "Lured away by liberals" but they miss the point that some people do batshit crazy things in the name of their religion. :/

As a Christian, it really hurts when someone tells me I'm going to Hell for being bisexual.

[batyatoon]

As a private religious school, they had a right to fire a teacher who violated religious law as they see it.

They had no right whatsoever to publicize the reason for her termination to anyone.

Leviticus 19:16: Thou shalt not go about as a talebearer among thy people; thou shalt not stand idly by the blood of thy neighbor.

[brithistorian.livejournal.com]

I very nearly ended up in a job with this sort of religious requirement. The last time I was unemployed, I was so desperate that I applied for a unit secretary job at a Catholic-run mental health center. (The problem here was with "Catholic-run," as I've done both "unit secretary" and "mental health center" before and enjoyed them just fine.) They liked my resume enough to call me in for an interview, and one of the topics that came up during the interview was that I would have to sign a form saying that I would not say anything during the course of contact with patients or their families that would contradict Catholic policy on abortion. (At that point I was desperate enough for a job that I would have signed the form and worried about the ethical implications later. But apparently something in the interview made them decide not to hire me, so I never had to actually deal with it.)

[lemmozine.livejournal.com]

The people who are actually going to hell (because they're already occupying a hell of their own making) are those who spend their time telling others they are going to hell. In particular, all fundamentalists, of any type, are going to hell. Or Weehawken, New Jersey. Or something like that.

Next time you meet one of them, ask them if they're trying intentionally to kill god with their sanctimonious huypocrisy, or if that's just a byproduct of their ignorance.

[bryanp.livejournal.com]

Even my so-far-to-the-right-he-makes-me-sound-like-Tom coworker rolled his eyes at this one when he found out the details. This is just ridiculous.

[mclain143.livejournal.com]

"freedom of religion" trumps "right to privacy" because "freedom of religion" actually is IN the Constitution, whereas "right to privacy" was made-up and foisted upon this country by jurists with an agenda.

[unclelumpy.livejournal.com]

Then sacrifice yours or be branded an accessory.