Students at four parochial schools including Marin Catholic High School plan to speak out Thursday afternoon in support of teachers and against so-called “morality clauses” proposed for the faculty handbook.

The speak-out is one of a cascade of protests against the clauses, including a resolution unanimously passed by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors last week urging Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone to respect teachers’ rights. Students will gather at St. Mary’s Cathedral Plaza in San Francisco at 5:30 p.m. to voice their feelings.

The guidelines proposed by Cordileone call sex outside marriage, homosexual relations and masturbation “gravely evil” and would require workers at archdiocese high schools to “affirm and believe” strict guidelines in the faculty handbook. The archbishop also proposed designating teachers as “ministers” in a contract that is being negotiated.

On March 3, more than 80 percent of the teachers at the four high schools issued a statement rejecting the proposed handbook language.

Thursday’s speak-out will feature a banner with the hashtag #teachacceptance, according to Gina Welisch, a 17-year-old Marin Catholic senior who is an organizer of the event. The students have been using the hashtag since February, when they held a protest vigil outside Sacred Heart Cathedral in San Francisco. The banner will also be decorated with expressions of values such as love and justice.

“All my life I have been taught that the Catholic religion is built on love and acceptance. The God I have been taught about by my teachers is a God who would take in the outcasts and stand up for others. So if God is accepting, shouldn’t we all follow in his footsteps?” said Welisch in a statement.

“My teachers have supported me for the last four years. So now when the Archbishop’s actions are creating an environment of intolerance, discrimination and fear for the teachers and community, it is my duty to support my teachers,” Welisch said.

“It is quite amazing what these students are doing in organizing,” said Micaela Presti, a parent at Marin Catholic and an alumna. “The kids at Marin Catholic are getting together with kids at three other schools and working on a diocese-wide effort.”

The other three schools are Riordan and Sacred Heart in San Francisco and Serra High School in San Mateo.

“It’s impressive that they will speak up about intolerance, because this for me is about intolerance,” Presti said. “What if a teacher can’t get pregnant and has to use in vitro fertilization? They could get fired.”

Additionally, the effort to designate high school teachers as ministers is of concern to teachers because, if successful, it would remove government-mandated employee protections.

Gina Jaeger, a Marin Catholic teacher and union representative with Archdiocesan Federation of Teachers, has expressed optimism about the negotiations over the “minister” language in the contract, as did Marin Catholic Principal Chris Valdez.

“It’s encouraging that he (Cordileone) wants to work with the union to reexamine that minister language because he has made it clear he wants the teachers to be able to retain their rights for any grievance procedures,” Valdez said.

As to the handbook language, which is a separate concern not affected by contract negotiations, Valdez confirmed that Cordileone has created a committee of theology teachers from the four high schools to help with the addendum language.

Exactly what effect this would have on the controversial language is hard to determine, as the archbishop has not made it clear. Calls and email to the Archdiocese in an effort to obtain clarification were not returned.