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.

[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: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 towhere 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.