Woman Fired Over Same-Sex Wedding Announcement

by Alex DiBranco · 2010-11-10 15:40:00 UTC
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When a person gets married, they often want to share it with the world — or at least their city. So Laine Tadlock's decision to run a wedding announcement in her local paper, the State Journal-Register, seems like nothing out of the ordinary.

Unfortunately, Michael Jones reports on Gay Rights that this particular wedding announcement cost her a job. Is her employer just really anti-marriage? Not exactly. The issue at stake was that she was getting married to another woman.

Her employer, the Catholic Benedictine University in Springfield, IL, was not pleased to discover that "here come the brides" was the name of the game at Tadlock's wedding. While Tadlock has been out about her sexual orientation since the beginning of her job, and many of her coworkers knew about the upcoming nuptials — and the sex of her intended — and had offered their congratulations, the higher-ups alerted to her plans via wedding announcement weren't so happy for her.

Tadlock was pushed to take early retirement, a move which would have allowed the University to save face, but she had no intention of helping them shove her out of a job over her marriage. So, effective October 28, Benedictine University went ahead and gave her the boot anyway, writing, "By publicizing the marriage ceremony in which she participated in Iowa she has significantly disregarded and flouted core religious beliefs which, as a Catholic institution, it is our mission to uphold."

Ironically, Benedictine University has an employment non-discrimination policy which includes both sexual orientation and marital status. Huh ... so, if they just stuck to their own policies, we wouldn't have an incident of intolerance and homophobia to report on?

Though the University higher-ups can't stand hearing about a same-sex employee, most of her coworkers are supportive, with one woman even resigning in protest of the school's action. Thanks go out to Maureen Lavin for making it clear that if her employer didn't want Tadlock just because she has a wife, she didn't want her employer.

Tell Benedictine University and the Diocese of Springfield to uphold their own anti-discrimination policies, apologize, and give Laine Tadlock her job back. If she'll have them.

Photo credit: CornellMare

Alex DiBranco is a Change.org Editor who has worked for the Nation, Political Research Associates, and the Center for American Progress. She is now based in New York City.
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