Gay theatre teacher fired after announcing wedding online loses court appeal

by Chris Peterson, OnStage Blog Founder

In 2001, Lonnie Billard began teaching drama at Charlotte Catholic High School in North Carolina. A year before that, he met Richard Donham, and the two dated for over a decade before finally being able to wed when gay marriage became legal in the state in 2014.

After announcing their wedding in a social media post, Billard was fired from his job at Charlotte Catholic. In 2017, he(along with the ACLU) sued Charlotte Catholic High School and the Roman Catholic Diocese of Charlotte. In 2021, the district court ruled in Billard’s favor and that the school and the Catholic Diocese of Charlotte violated workplace sex discrimination laws in firing him.

“I wish I could have remained teaching all this time,” he commented at the time. “Today’s decision validates that I did nothing wrong by being a gay man.”

But last week, the 2021 court decision was reversed on appeal by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. The court ruled that Billard, in his role as a teacher at a Catholic school, counts as a “minister” who can be fired for not adhering to the Church’s religious beliefs on homosexuality.

In a statement, the ACLU called the decision “heartbreaking” and condemned “widening the loopholes employers may use to fire people like Mr. Billard for openly discriminatory reasons.”

Interestingly enough, Charlotte Catholic didn’t hold the position that Billard was a “minister” for the school. But according to a report in the Washington Post,

“But the judges concluded that Billard was still “a vital role as a messenger of [the school’s] faith.” Teachers at the school were scored in their annual evaluations on whether their lesson plans were “agreeable with Catholic thought.” Billard testified that he coordinated with religion teachers to make sure his teaching of plays like “Romeo and Juliet” were “in tune” with the doctrine. Classes began with a prayer, and Billard took his students to Mass. All that, the court argued, made him a minister who could be let go for failing to, in the school’s view, properly represent Catholicism.”

“This is a massive victory,” said Luke Goodrich of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, who argued the case. No other court, he said, had ruled that a substitute teacher who did not teach religious classes counted as a “minister.” “Under the logic of this ruling, almost every teacher at almost every religious school” could be dismissed for “violating core religious beliefs.”

The Post also reported,

“Last year, the Supreme Court ruled that a wedding business owner could refuse to do work for a same-sex couple under the First Amendment’s free speech protections. The school argued that the ruling also helped its case, and that a church school has a related right to choose not to “associate” with gay people. But the school’s primary argument was that Billard’s firing fell under a different exception written into federal civil rights law — that faith groups can choose to employ “individuals of a particular religion.” A district court in Texas has agreed with that interpretation.”

So here’s my take, as a Catholic myself.

I’ve always felt that firing gay teachers from Catholic schools contradicts the principles of love, acceptance, and justice that lie at the heart of Catholic teaching. It fosters an environment of discrimination and exclusion, which goes against the Gospel's message of love and inclusion. It also sends a harmful message to students, particularly those who may be grappling with their own identities, that being LGBTQ+ is something to be ashamed of or hidden.

Discriminating against gay people is not only unjust but also fundamentally un-Christian.