12/10/2020
LGBTQ campaigners have joined with atheists and secular groups to welcome the decision of an employment tribunal to uphold the dismissal of Christian fundamentalist Kristie Higgs, who was quietly let go of by a Gloucestershire school after making a series of bizarre posts on social media, linking to anti-gay and anti-transgender groups. Ms Higgs claimed that she was the victim of religious persecution, but instead, according to both the Guardian and Pink News she was found to have been pursuing her own homophobic agenda. Higgs had been supported by a gaggle of anti-gay crusaders who call themselves the Christian Legal Centre, and who vowed to continue their campaign against inclusive education. Humanists UK, which represents the largest body of atheists in the UK, said “”the school was quite appropriately acting in the interests of its pupils & community”. One gay man went further and took to social media to claim “Schools have a duty to protect children from the machinations of evangelical bigots”. Pink News concluded that Employment Judge Derek Reed affirmed that Higgs was sacked was “because the school felt that the language used in those posts might reasonably lead someone who read them to conclude that she held [transphobic and homophobic] views” and because of “a genuine belief on the part of the school that she had committed gross misconduct.” Meanwhile, the secularist news wire Secular Outpost Online is continuing with a fascinating series of articles on the history of Leviticus, that part of the Bible often quoted by fundamentalist groups as grounds for their hostility towards homosexuality in particular. The series of well reasoned analysis shows how these clauses were exaggerated, distorted and deliberately created by radical groups.
