The interconnections between church and state have been manifold in Irish history and the fields of education and sexuality bear the imprints of this complicated relationship. Currently, 91% of primary schools and 52% of second-level schools remain under religious patronage while in law, discrimination on the grounds of compliance with religious ethos is permitted in the recruitment and dismissal of teachers. Through the lens of the relatively recent institution of civil partnership (CP) in Ireland, this paper explores the construction of teacher and sexual subjectivities in Irish primary and second-level schools. Framed by the notion of a ‘Catholic habitus’ and theoretical work that explores the difficulties with religious/secular binaries, this paper draws on the analysis of data collected over a one and a half year period with 15 primary and second-level teachers who were planning or had entered into a CP in Ireland. These teachers’ accounts of complex relationships with religion and spirituality are an illustration of the multifarious complexities of negotiating an LGBT teacher identity in the Irish context. This paper considers the implications of binaries such as church/state, regressive/progressive and religious/secular because of the complexities silenced by their inception.