A social media influencer sacked by a Catholic school over her private Instagram posts is to appeal against a tribunal ruling which upheld her dismissal.
Gozen Soydag, 37, was fired as pastoral manager from St Anne’s Catholic High School for Girls in Enfield, North London, because the beliefs she expressed about marriage in her @wifeinthewaiting account were “incompatible with the school’s ethos”.
Miss Soydag argued, however, that she used the account privately to promote traditional Christian teaching on marriage and the family.
She sued the school for wrongful dismissal, harassment, discrimination and breaches of her human rights on the grounds of her Christian beliefs.
She lost the case and her lawyers will now appeal against the ruling at the Employment Appeal Tribunal.
At the hearing at Watford Employment Tribunal, Jo Saunders, the assistant headteacher, was asked if Miss Soydag’s free speech had been curtailed.
Ms Saunders told the tribunal: “We did not curtail her free speech, we just said that she had to take down her posts.”
Employment Judge Sarah Matthews dismissed each of Miss Soydag’s claims and said her posts “only celebrated the nuclear family, which could make other students from different backgrounds feel devalued”.
After the hearing, Miss Soydag said: “I am devastated and confused by the ruling and am determined to appeal and continue to fight for justice.
“I wanted to work in the education sector and make an impact for young people. This was a Catholic school, and they knew I was a passionate woman of faith. The school’s building is in the shape of the cross. Every classroom had a cross and Bible verses on the walls. This was a place where I believed they accepted Jesus.
“My social media channels were about sharing hope through the Word of God, especially for women.
“I stand for the nuclear marriage and God’s blueprint for marriage. I’m not against anyone, I am for God’s blueprint for the family and believe children do best in a nuclear family.
“I want to continue to speak up because traditional Christian marriage in this country is being broken, trampled on, and even marginalised, and what has happened to me really highlights that.
“I believe if this had been anyone else with a belief as part of the ‘inclusive’ culture, I would not be sitting here, I would have been celebrated and promoted. For discussing and debating traditional Christian marriage and family, I was sacked, and that cannot be right.”
Andrea Williams, chief executive of the Christian Legal Centre, which is helping Miss Soydag to fight her case, said that the ruling sends the message “that Christians who share their beliefs on marriage are not welcome in our school”.
“Every type of relationship and family must be celebrated, but if you celebrate and promote the traditional family on social media you do so at risk of dismissal,” she said.
“Gozen unashamedly loves Jesus and is a brilliant advocate for women and God’s great and beautiful plan for marriage.
“Gozen was doing a fantastic job in a tough area of London, supporting young women in a Catholic school and had had nothing but praise, until someone complained about the beliefs she expressed and put forward for debate in her own time.
“This is another example of schools, which on the surface have a strong Christian ethos, panicking and capitulating to secular orthodoxy and the ‘offence’ of Christian marriage.
“The judgment manipulates the facts and evidence to construct a conclusion to suit its ends. The whole exercise becomes one of legal fiction which we intend to overturn through the appeal system.”
With more than 30,000 followers, @wifeinthewaiting is described as “a God centred ministry that encourages, empowers and equips women, who desire to be married, to position in purpose, dedicated specifically to celebrating the institution of marriage and the traditional nuclear family”.
One video Miss Soydag had shared on Instagram, which she was told was of particular concern, involved a woman wearing Muslim attire talking about her happiness of living in submission to her husband. On occasion Miss Soydag would post videos on the theme of marriage and relationships, not because she agreed with the entirety of what she posted, but to generate debate.
The assistant deputy head told Miss Soydag that this video was concerning because if the same statements were made by a man, they would be deemed “misogynistic”.
Other beliefs expressed on her Instagram account included the holiness of marriage and the importance of the traditional nuclear family, the importance of preserving purity for marriage and not co-habiting, and the Biblical belief from Ephesians Chapter 5, which says wives should “submit to their husbands as to the Lord”.
Miss Soydag was told by the school that all employees’ social media accounts had to be kept private and must not be accessible to the public. She was also told to take down the video, which had generated the initial concern, which she did immediately.
Miss Soydag was later dismissed and told in an email that “due to much of your extensive online profile being incompatible with the schools mission statement and ethos, and the fact that despite being asked to remove such incompatible information your profile appears to a large extent to remain unchanged”.
Neither the school nor the Archdiocese of Westminster were available for comment.
<em>(Screenshot of Gozen Soydag from Christian Concern YouTube)</em>
