A part-time employee of a Seattle-area Catholic school has announced
that she is planning a same-sex wedding in August – and the school’s
president and CEO says that she is “welcome” to stay, according to a
local media report.
In December, Mark Zmuda, the vice principal at Eastside Catholic School,
was dismissed after his summer same-sex wedding became a matter of
public knowledge.
A local newspaper reported that the dismissal followed
a conversation between Archbishop J. Peter Sartain and the school’s
president and CEO, Sister Mary Tracy.
The vice principal’s dismissal led
400 of the school’s students to protest.
On January 7, Stephanie Merrow, a part-time drama coach at the school,
announced that she will wed another woman in the summer and said that
she feared for her job.
““I’m doing this to support the kids, and what the kids are trying to do
is get to the Pope and change the Church,” said Merrow, according to a
KING-TV report.
The Seattle NBC station also reported that Gene Colin, the chairman of
Eastside Catholic’s board, was involved in Zmuda’s dismissal and has
resigned and that Sister Tracy said that Merrow “is ‘welcome’ to
continue working on campus.”
“Sister Tracy also told KING 5 the board discussed ways to prevent the
current controversy from happening again, indicating the school would
seek counsel from the Archdiocese and research other similar
circumstances around the nation,” the report added.
According to a student, Sister Tracy said that “I look forward to the
day where no individual loses their job because they married a person of
the same sex.”
Sister Tracy, according to the school’s website, worked for 15 years at
the National Catholic Educational Association in Washington, most
recently as the NCEA Director of Advancement Services.