Fired for being gay, she soldiers on

I DON'T THINK twice about taking my husband's hand in public. In fact, I don't think about it at all. We'll be walking together and I'll suddenly notice that our fingers are entwined.

The habit is so ingrained, I don't know how I'd break it. Not that I want to. He's my husband; I love him. If our hand-holding tells the world we're together, that's because we are.

During the eight years Margie Winters worked as the director of religious education at Waldron Mercy Academy in Lower Merion, she deliberately held back from publicly taking the hand of her wife, Andrea Vittori.

If they chanced upon someone Winters knew from the school, Vittori would even wander away lest anyone sense the vibe between the women, correctly presume it was love and rat them out for "flaunting" their commitment to each other.

I can't imagine the restraint it must have taken to refrain from a sweet gesture that straight couples take for granted. The idea of it breaks my heart, actually.

Winters, as we all know by now, was booted from Waldron in June after she was ratted out to the wrong Catholic higher-ups as being a married lesbian. Her selective firing from the little school, run by the Sisters of Mercy, was merciless. But the unanticipated blessing has been that Winters no longer has to withhold from the world who she is.

What a relief it has been. But how sad that to be truly known by the school community she loved she had to lose the place that had drawn them together.

Winters recounts with wonder what it was like, after news of her firing went viral, when Waldron parents and children gathered at her Glenside home on the day a TV news team visited to interview them all.

While the reporter spoke with Winters and Vittori inside, the kids played in the yard. Afterward, the families warmly hugged Vittori.

"They said, 'It's so good to meet you!' " says Winters. "We had pizza and then we helped the kids pick vegetables from our garden. It was beautiful! It's the simple things that connect us and make us part of each others' lives. I saw what I'd missed by not sharing my life all those years. Not that I could've, obviously."

The stakes were just too high, as her firing has proven.

So now she's out. She's also unemployed and uncertain about her next career move. Her position at Waldron - her third gig in a Catholic school over an 18-year-span - was more than a job. It was a ministry, part of her calling to be an educator who helps others to grow in their faith.

"What other Catholic school would hire me?" she says. "Everyone knows me now. So the same issue would come up."

For the time being, she and Vittori are holding their own financially, thanks to a gofundme.com campaign organized by Waldron parents that brought in more than $18,000 to help the couple pay the bills until Winters finds new work.

Ah, work. This time last year, Winters was neck-deep in it, preparing for the first day of school, never dreaming that this September she'd be the latest face of an issue - the full expression of LGBTQ Catholics in their church - that is battering Roman Catholicism.

"Emotionally, this has been difficult," says Winters. "My internal calendar tells me it's the start of the new year, time to reconnect with my Waldron family. Instead, the reality is sinking in that I'm not part of the school any more."

She wants to remain available as a support to Waldon staffers and families who are reeling from the fallout of her departure. One parent tells me that at least a dozen families, repulsed by Winters' firing, have withdrawn from Waldron. Others wanted to, but were unable to find a suitable school to which to transfer their kids on such short notice.

"I am trying to find the most appropriate ways to stay connected," says Winters. "This is my community, so I feel like I should be there with them through this," the way she would've been during any other school crisis.

"Part of me wants to be in the middle of the conversations they will be having at Waldron," including a meeting scheduled for last night, Winters says. "The question would be, how do we keep mercy at the center of our decisions, policies and approaches to these topics?

"The world wants to divide us when we disagree. It wants us angry and seething, to walk away. Mercy calls us to come back and to be in conversation with all parties, even those we disagree with, to find mutuality. Dialogue is what our community needs."

She still says "our" about a community from which she was formally ousted, but which has refused to let her go. Both Winters and the Waldron families who support her are in a weird, evolving toggle between grief and grace, regret and relief, worry and hope.

The one, miraculous constant: Winters and Vittori, hand-in-hand at last, with heads held high.

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