BACKWARDS

Gay Teacher Fired for Being Married

At a Philadelphia Catholic school.

The director of religious education at a Philadelphia Catholic school was fired last week after two parents discovered she was in a same-sex marriage. Margie Winters, who taught for eight years at Waldron Mercy Academy, says she and her wife “kept a really low profile” about their marriage at the school after she was advised by the principal to avoid the topic with students’ parents. But parents of at least two students discovered Winters’s marital status and complained to the school and the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. Winters was fired in a letter on June 22. The principal, Nell Stetser, said in a statement that “the primary consideration that guided my decision-making process was to sustain the Catholic identity of Waldron Mercy Academy.”