A longtime music teacher at a Catholic school in the New Orleans area recently lost his job when it was revealed to an evidently “disgruntled” parent that he was another man’s widower, igniting a scandal within an archdiocese that has otherwise largely been occupied with trying to reorganize its finances in federal bankruptcy court after its clergymen spent decades sexually molesting children.
In an email to community members at the archdiocese-run school from which he was dismissed, Mark Richards explained that he had been fired because a parent notified officials about an obituary for his husband, who died of a heart attack in September 2023.
Richards’ email alluded to how his employment contract at St Francis Xavier school in Metairie, Louisiana, contained a morality clause prohibiting educators from “contracting a marriage in violation of the rules of the Catholic church” and “actively engaging in homosexual activity”, along with other conduct that the document maintains is inconsistent with the teachings of the religion that does not recognize same-sex matrimony.