Lesbian teacher says fired by Detroit Catholic school over pregnancy

DETROIT (Reuters) - A Detroit-area teacher says she was fired from her post at a private Catholic all-girls high school after she and her lesbian partner announced they were expecting a child through non-traditional means.

Hundreds of supporters for Barb Webb, a teacher at Marian High School in suburban Bloomfield Hills, rallied on Sunday at the school after she posted on Facebook that she had been forced from her job after she become pregnant “outside the Catholic way."

Webb said she was asked late last month to choose between resigning or being fired, but decided against leaving voluntarily although she said the school had offered healthcare for the remainder of the school year had she chosen to resign. She was 14 weeks pregnant at the time.

“I feel sickened for my colleagues who are disgusted with this decision but are forced into silence for fear for their own jobs,” Webb wrote on her Facebook page in which she detailed her firing, the latest in a string of such actions involving gay and lesbian employees at U.S. Catholic schools in recent years.