Woman says she was fired for being unwed mother

HENRICO COUNTY, Va. -- Pregnant mother Apryl Kellam said her place of employment, a Baptist church, gave her a deadline: Announce a wedding date, or get fired.

Kellam, who is pregnant with a second child, was fired from her daycare job at Staples Mill Road Baptist Church Monday, WTVR reports. She is engaged to and lives with the father of that child but has not set a date for the wedding.

"I want to wait so we can have all our family and friends there and have a big wedding," Kellam told WTVR. "I just don't want to go to the courthouse and have someone marry us."

Kellam said she was fired for not following the rules of a handbook that she never received. The rules pertained to her marriage status.

"When she hired me in September she knew that I had a child out-of-wedlock and I was living with the guy I was going to marry," Kellam said of her boss.

Specifically, Kellam said, there is a rule that employees of the church have to be married.

The church, though, says it employs plenty of single women and even single mothers. Pastor James Booth said that all employees are required to sign a handbook.

Booth would not go into details about Kellam's specific case. He said that confidentiality laws forbid him from discussing it and that the church has faced unfair criticism from not being able to tell its side of the story.

"People are calling us judgmental, but that's judgmental, to say we're being judgmental when they don't know us," Booth told WTVR. "They don't know our heart. We're not trying to be hurtful, we're just following our personnel handbook which is rooted in our statement of faith and our biblical beliefs."

Kellam and her fiance, James Coalson, said they are considering legal action. The church said it believes it acted within its rights. An employment attorney told WTVR the situation is in a gray area because of separation of church and state.