Brianna Coppage, Teaching, Money, And Morality Clauses

Should a teacher be fired for being on Only fans if the school district isn’t paying her to make ends meet?

The essence of this Brianna Coppage case is that she worked in a low-paying school district in Missouri and had an OnlyFans page to help make her ends meet. She was fired when someone, apparently one of her supervisors at the school, found the page. I am not sure of the specific terms of the firing, although it seems it would be related to a potentially boiler-plate “morality clause” in her contract.

For her part, Coppage told this to The New York Post:

“There is this expectation that teachers should be the moral leaders of students, and I do not disagree with that … I taught the curriculum. I taught students reading and writing, and I didn’t guide them on my thoughts or beliefs. … And I can’t control what people think of me. I just know that who I am as a person, I’m not doing anything illegal. I am a good friend. I am a good family member. That is all I can think about right now.”

This kind of stuff is extremely triggering for people and creates deep division lines among human beings, especially in polarized America.

On the far right side, you have people who think OnlyFans is a form of prostitution — semantically it is, but not really — and that anything tied to the platform is akin to the downfall of society, and GASP, a teacher doing it? That brings you right back to the school-driven culture wars.

On the far left side, you have people being perhaps too permissive of sex work (which is a better term for what OnlyFans is), and that infuriates the far right side even more.

To see this encapsulated well, here’s Matt Walsh with significant moral panic: