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.
A Drag Queen Story Time event scheduled for Saturday, April 6, at Freddie's Beach Bar in Arlington, Va., was delayed for over an hour after an unknown person emailed a bomb threat.
Local police evacuated the popular LGBTQ bar while a bomb-sniffing dog searched the premises.
Ultimately, the dog found no trace of any explosives. Patrons of Freddie's, who had clustered in the outdoor seating area and parking lot behind the bar, eventually returned inside, and the show -- featuring musical numbers and children's book readings by drag queen Tara Hoot -- continued.
A Cranford, New Jersey bakery was overwhelmed with support last week after being threatened with a boycott for displaying a rainbow Pride flag at the store's entrance.
In April, the Sweet n' Fancy Emporium was sent an anonymous letter, from "Citizens of Cranford," complaining about the bakery's Pride flag.
"I noticed the rainbow flag hanging in your window," the letter reads. "I have notified all of my girlfriends who in turn have decided to boycott your store.
"It is not that we despise the flag...it is just we do not want to be associated with crazy left wingers who hate America. We have decided to take our business elsewhere and have blasted your organization all over social media."
A former Christian school teacher has been arrested and charged with committing several violent crimes against men he met through the gay dating app Grindr.
Antoine Perteet, 33, a former physical education teacher and security guard at Lions Mathematics and Science Christian Academy in Waukegan, is accused of using Grindr to target potential victims and rob them.
The school has since removed him from its faculty directory, according to a report from the Lake McHenry County Scanner.
Perteet, a Waukegan resident who is married and has four children, has been charged with three counts of armed robbery and kidnapping with a firearm, plus one count of carjacking, for his alleged involvement in three separate attacks against men on Chicago's West Side last summer.
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