The mother of a 4-year-old preschool student in London who was to be required by his primary school to attend a school-sponsored LGBT Pride event is scheduled to have her case heard in court Feb. 1 after nearly five years.
Izzy Montague says the tone of leaders at Heaver’s Farm Primary School of Croydon, in south London, grew hostile toward her and her son after she protested the requirement that the boy attend the school’s Pride parade, based on the family’s Christian beliefs.
After what she has described as bullying and intimidation, she withdrew her son from the school.
According to the U.K.-based Christian Legal Centre (CLC), which is representing Montague, the school’s deputy head teacher was certified as a Pride “champion” in the Stonewall LGBT organization, and the school’s Pride activities were illegally partisan and amounted to heavy-handed indoctrination of children.
Additionally, the CLC says parents received no advance notice of the Pride activities. Montague learned of it from a local newspaper article.
“I wasn’t even trying to stop the Pride event,” Montague said. “I just wanted my child to receive an education, rather than indoctrination.
“After I complained about my young child being forced to take part in an event that goes against our Christian beliefs, the school’s attitude towards me changed completely. Other parents were afraid to speak up because of how the school treated me.”
The case is scheduled to be tried at Central London County Court.
Montague brought action against the school on grounds of “direct and indirect discrimination, victimisation and breach of statutory duty under the Education Act 1996 and the Human Rights Act 1998.” In her complaint, she also cites the U.K.’s Equality Act 2010, which forbids discrimination based on religious beliefs.
CLC says it is the first case in which a U.K. court will weigh the legality of imposing LGBT ideology on primary schools versus British laws on the human rights of parents and children, the right to opt out of sex education, and a school’s duty to maintain political neutrality.
“Those who preach tolerance and diversity the loudest do not appear to be interested in practicing it,” said Andrea Williams, CLC’s chief executive, dubbing their effort an example of “totalitolerance.”
“The treatment of parents at Heaver’s Farm Primary School represents some of the most chilling breaches of parental rights I have ever seen in my many years of working on educational issues.”
According to CLC, during a formal meeting between school leaders and Montague, the head teacher’s daughter wore a t-shirt that read: “Why be racist, sexist, homophobic or transphobic, when you can just be quiet?”
CLC also says a photo on the school’s website showed a first-year pupil with a placard she had scribbled after a lesson about Martin Luther King’s historic “I Have a Dream” speech. It said in childlike spelling: “I have a dreem if bois cood go to the saim toilet as gerls.
