Fri 21 Sep 2012 In: New Zealand Daily News View at Wayback View at NDHA
Glyn Cardy The Vicar of Auckland’s equality-embracing St-Matthew-in the-City has commended the courageous example of a Whangarei school teacher who stood up for marriage equality, and condemned the actions of the Catholic school which has fired him. Popular science teacher Nigel Studdart has been sacked by Pompallier Catholic College’s Board of Trustees after supporting students who silently protested the principal’s column in a school newsletter railing against same-sex marriage. Glynn Cardy from St-Matthew-in the-City is thanking Studdart for modeling to his students and the community the moral fortitude required to stand up for what he believes. “It is this sort of courageous example that our young people need.,” Cardy says. “Your action also sends a wonderfully encouraging message to the many LGBT youth across New Zealand that discrimination is wrong, that some teachers are not prepared to be privately supportive but publically silent, and that there are people of religious faith who believe that the sacrament of marriage should be available to gay and lesbian couples.” Cardy says he understands the position of New Zealand’s Catholic Bishops on the Marriage Amendment Bill, and that principal Richard Stanton might want to endorse that in his position as the leader of a Catholic school. “However by stopping the expression of contrary opinions, and in particular by going to the extraordinary length of dismissing a popular and competent teacher, you are sending out a message that the school is not a place where robust debate can happen, and is not a place that can manage and appreciate diverse views,” Cardy says. “This seeming fear of difference is at odds with the best of Roman Catholicism’s social practice in New Zealand, a practice marked by tolerance and compassion.”
Credit: GayNZ.com Daily News staff
First published: Friday, 21st September 2012 - 12:27pm