GLOUCESTERSHIRE — An employee at a school in the UK has been dismissed after posting objection on her personal Facebook page to teaching about homosexuality and transgenderism in the nation’s schools.
According to reports, Kristie Higgs learned last year that her son’s primary school, a separate school in the village that is affiliated with the Church of England, would be adopting the “No Outsiders” curriculum, which according to a site about the book, “aims to bring children and parents on board from the start so that children leave primary school happy and excited about living in a community full of difference and diversity, whether that difference is through ethnicity, gender, ability, sexual orientation, gender identity, age or religion.”
She attended a meeting to learn more about what the school planned to implement, and then soon shared a petition on her personal Facebook page opposing a government proposal to make Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) mandatory for both primary and secondary schools.
“They are brainwashing our children,” Higgs wrote. “[RSE] means, for example, that children will be taught that all relationships are equally valid and ‘normal,’ so that same-sex marriage is exactly the same as traditional marriage and that gender is a matter of choice, not biology, so that it’s up to them what sex they are.”
“At the same, it means that expressing and teaching fundamental Christian beliefs relating to the creation of men and women and marriage will in practice become forbidden because they conflict with the new morality and are seen as indoctrination into unacceptable religious bigotry,” she added.
Higgs urged her friends to sign the petition, opining that she feared that freedom of speech on the issues will soon only be permitted “for those who toe the party line,” and that such is a “vicious form of totalitarianism aimed at suppressing Christianity and removing it from the public arena.”
She additionally shared an article to her Facebook account about two transgender-centered children’s books that are being utilized in American schools, writing above the link, “This is happening in our primary schools now.”
According to the organization Christian Concern, Higgs’ posts were only visible to her friends. One unidentified individual who saw her comments contacted Higgs’ place of employment, Farmor’s School in Fairford, to lodge a complaint.
Following an investigation and a six-hour hearing, Higgs was dismissed from her duties at the school where she worked (not the same school as her son’s). Reasons provided for her firing included “illegal discrimination,” “serious inappropriate use of social media” and “online comments that could bring the school into disrepute and damage the reputation of the school.”
Higgs says, however, that she feels that she is the one being discriminated against.
“I have been punished for sharing concerns about Relationships and Sex Education. I hold these views because of my Christian beliefs, beliefs and views which are shared by hundreds of thousands of parents across the UK,” she said in a statement. “My number one concern has always been the effect that learning about sex and gender in school will have on children at such a young age.”
“As soon as the investigation into the posts began, I was repeatedly told, ‘This is nothing to do with your religion.’ That was clearly a legal tactic, and of course it has everything to do with my religion,” she opined. “I am determined to fight this case and to stand for Christians and all parents across the country who are being silenced for sharing and holding these views.”
Christian Concern and the Christian Legal Centre are now assisting Higgs with the matter.
“Many Christians have faced pressure for expressing these views in the workplace before, but in this case, Kristie has been dismissed for sharing her views among friends on Facebook,” said Chief Executive Andrea Williams. “What Kristie shared on Facebook simply reflects the genuine and justified concerns of a parent about the sexual ideology currently being imposed on her own children and thousands of children across the UK.”
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