Flight attendant said Catholics shouldn't observe Pride Month. So he was fired: Report

A former United Airlines flight attendant says that the airline fired him because he talked to a colleague about his faith’s gender doctrine. Someone filed an anonymous X complaint against him, accusing him of things he says are completely false.

Ruben DSanchez Jrhas been working with the airline for 28 years and is now fighting to get his job back. The 52-year-old told the New York Post that he is "too young to retire and too old to start new". He is currently working as an active-duty member of the Air National Guard in Alaska for a much lower salary.

Sanchez says that on May 31, 2023, he was on a red-eye flight from Los Angeles to Cleveland assigned to work on it at the last minute. He was struggling to stay awake, and so started talking to a colleague about their shared Catholic faith and the Pride month that was to start the next day.

He said to the other attendant, "You know, as Catholics, we’re not really supposed to be observing Pride". He says it was all supposed to be "innocent" and a way to stay awake.

But someone complained about him to the airline through a post on X, accusing him of "hating all black people" and of "proudly being anti-trans”.

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Sanchez told the Post that Pride Month was “a big deal at United" and the airline has "Pride flags everywhere” and “drag-queen DJs” playing music at its Los Angeles terminal.

He told his colleague in the conversation, "The church will never believe that men give birth, women have penises or that the church should bless same-sex marriages because marriage is a sacrament, and it’s not meant for two men or two women or three people or whatever."

"That’s all I said," he told the publication.

Sanchez's social media posts were scrutinised

Sanchez says he was suspended with pay over the complaint and a supervisor told him that the airline would examine his Twitter (now X) history.

Two of his posts were found to show "disrespect to any passenger of size". He had posted some Joan Rivers jokes about Elizabeth Taylor’s weight and one about plus-size politician Chris Christie.

He had also posted about removing the “transgender triangle” from the Pride flag and also disagreed on global warming.

The airline also said that a post of him carrying a pilot over his shoulder “created a nexus” between his personal social media posts and his job.

Sanchez says neither the airline nor the Association of Flight Attendants union supported him on the entire matter.