Today in Just Like Jesus Would Do

[Content Note: Transphobia; homophobia. Also: The linked pieces use male pronouns and a male name to refer to the trans female teacher. I have made a good faith effort to try to confirm hir preferences; the best I could find is that the HuffPo made an inquiry about pronoun/name usage and received no response. I will use gender neutral pronouns here and abbreviate hir first name to M.]

Shaker Brunocerous emails, which I am sharing with his permission:

One of my very favorite teachers at the Catholic high school I attended was horribly discriminated against recently.

A transgender teacher is suing the New York City Catholic school where [zie] worked for more than 30 years, claiming [zie] was wrongfully terminated for growing out [hir] hair, painting [hir] fingernails and being "worse than gay."

In a lawsuit, [M.] Krolikowski, 59, alleges that after 32 years of teaching at St. Francis Prep in Queens, N.Y., and receiving numerous accolades for [hir] work including leading students in a musical performance for Pope Benedict XVI, [zie] was fired last year after the parents of a ninth grader complained about [hir] appearance.

I remember a wonderful teacher, full of compassion, wit, understanding and respect. I am appalled that a school would treat such a profoundly talented and caring teacher with more than 30 years of experience and so many accolades in such a manner completely contrary to its stated mission and beliefs.

There is a petition here, requesting a formal apology from the school.

Thank you for reading. I'm almost in tears right now with the utter contempt I feel toward this injustice.

The behavior of the school is a total disgrace. And I am certainly not surprised to see a Catholic institution extend such intolerant bigotry toward a trans* teacher, but it is nonetheless sort of breathtaking that in the conveyance of one hostility, the school actually had to rank where being trans* fell on the hierarchy of Terrible Things. "Worse than gay. But not as bad as cannibalism!"

I guess the school just wanted to make sure that its gay students (and teachers) remember that they are hated, too.