Morality Clause
In Love Is Strange , a movie I'd like to see that opens in a couple of big cities today, but not yet in Portland, a choir director loses his teaching job for getting married. Why would marriage cost him his job? Because he's gay. Wait, how can it be legal for a gay couple to marry, and simultaneously legal to fire a man for being gay? Because he teaches at a Catholic school, and religious institutions are allowed to practice job discrimination based on sexual orientation. Ludicrous, you say? How could this happen in our modern, tolerant world? Ten years ago, it almost happened to me. No, I was not, and am not, gay; nor was I getting married at the time. What I was doing was signing a petition opposing Oregon's "Defense of Marriage" ballot measure. The faith community I belonged to at the time was affiliated with the United Methodist Church, and took out an ad in the Oregonian listing the names of every signatory as a demonstration that people of faith wer...