Timothy Gordon is a friend of mine. He hosts a podcast in California, and is an outspoken Catholic conservative. Love him or hate him, he pulls no punches, and presents his opinion without apology — I think there is something to be said for that.
Whatever one thinks of Gordon’s rhetorical style, he is a man of deep faith and conviction. He has six children, one of whom was born with a traumatic brain injury and requires near-constant care.
Until recently, Tim was a theology teacher at a Catholic high school. Between his two books, his podcast, and his full-time job as a teacher, Gordon was able to support his family and the expansive medical needs of his daughter.
His daughter, who had been suffering from relentless bouts of seizures, recently underwent a hemispherectomy, a rare form of neurosurgery in which a large portion of one of the brain’s hemispheres is removed. It is an expensive procedure, and Tim was fortunate to have insurance from the Catholic high school that employed him to defray some of those expenses.
Members of that high-school community emailed Tim, wishing his daughter well during the surgery. They prayed for her on the morning announcements. But after Tim said something unfashionable about Black Lives Matter in public, his employment at the school was swiftly terminated. No longer covered by the school’s insurance, his daughter’s expensive recovery would have to be financed out-of-pocket.
Gordon, on his Twitter account, referred to Black Lives Matter as a terrorist organization. Perhaps you agree with that assessment, and perhaps you don’t. But in either case, that Gordon — a devoted teacher, husband, and father — should be fired from his job at a Catholic high school for airing his opinion on that question is absurd. That he was fired not long after his daughter’s brain surgery borders on cruelty, and certainly raises questions about the Catholic identity of the school that employed him.