Texas Teachers Fired After Attending Drag Show
The teachers were informed that attending a drag show and posting pictures of it on social media violated their school's morality clause.
Two teachers at a Christian school in Texas were reportedly fired after attending a drag performance at a local restaurant, and one posted about the experience on social media.
Kristi Maris, who worked as a physical education teacher at the First Baptist Academy in Baytown, Texas, for nearly 20 years, claims she was fired after attending a July 13 drag show at Hamburger Mary’s restaurant in Houston.
“It was just so fun because they interacted with us,” Maris, who attended the show with along with her two adult children and a co-worker, told Houston-based ABC affiliate KTRK. “And they were just fun to look at — their costumes and the makeup and the hair.”
The school soon contacted her and informed her that she — and the co-worker — had been fired. Maris claims she wasn’t given clear reasons for the firing, but was directed to a photo on her Facebook account of her posing with some of the drag performers.
While the school did not respond to an ABC News request for comment, a school official pointed KTRK to the school’s operating policy manual, which requires employees to agree to abide by a morality clause reading, “I will act in a godly and moral fashion at work, on Facebook, and in my community.”
Maris said she was shocked to learn that her attendance at the drag show was considered a violation of her employment terms.
“They’re entertainers,” she said, shaking her head in disbelief. “No, I never would have thought, in a million years, that this would have happened. Never.”
She later recounted the episode in a Facebook post, explaining the school’s rationale.
“They told me because I went to this show and posted a picture I wasn’t walking in a Godly manner, so that being said, please remove yourself from my page if this offends you, if you think this is UnGodly, makes me a pedaphile (sic), or causes you to feel uncomfortable,” Maris wrote.
Maris told KTRK that she is frustrated over how she and her co-worker were fired.
“I feel we were treated like criminals,” she said. “We were in disbelief. We still are. We’re heartbroken. We have relationships with parents, with the kids, and I didn’t even get to say bye to a lot of the kids.”
Maris’s co-worker has not spoken publicly about the terminations.
The incident comes amid an ongoing societal backlash against the LGBTQ community, and drag more generally, as conservative politicians seize on voters’ discomfort with expressions of gender-nonconformity or displays of non-traditional sexuality.
Several states, including Texas, Tennessee, Kentucky, Montana, and Florida, have passed laws that effectively ban drag performances in public, and impose fines on performers and venues that host drag shows in spaces where they might, even inadvertently, be viewed by minors.
Maris told ABC News that, as a Christian, she’s always been taught to love everyone equally — even sinners — and believes that her firing goes against that principle.
“It doesn’t matter what color you are, doesn’t matter if you’re gay or you’re straight,” she said. “You just have to love everyone. If there was more kindness in the world, we wouldn’t be in this whole predicament.
“We just need to show grace and mercy and forgiveness and stop being so judgmental,” she added.
Hamburger Mary’s in Houston has spoken out in support of the two teachers.
“We want our guests to come in, let their hair down, and forget about whatever they have going on in their personal life,” the restaurant’s Facebook post reads, adding that the two women “are the teachers, not only children, [but] the whole world deserves!”
The restaurant will be hosting a benefit show on August 3 to help out both women and to “raise awareness that drag queens and the LGBTQIA+ community are not bad people.”
“We accept and love everyone!” the restaurant wrote, adding the hashtags #Dragisnotacrime, #Eatdrinkandbemary, and #loveislove.
The restaurant has also started a GoFundMe to raise additional money for both teachers. So far more than $8,000 has been raised. According to organizers, one hundred percent of donations will go directly to Maris and her co-worker.
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