I used to be fired for social media posts about being a superb Christian spouse… if it was LGBTQ points, I might have been praised: Counsellor suing Catholic faculty says celebrating conventional values is now taboo

As its thousand strong pupils are frequently reminded, the ethos of St Anne’s Catholic High School for Girls is rooted in Christian doctrine.

Beaming out from the school website and featured on its letterheads is the motto: ‘Act Justly, love tenderly, walk humbly with your God.’

The words are a clear indicator that this educational institution is not secular or – as Gozen Soydag puts it – ‘not on the face of it, at least’.

But then the 37-year-old law graduate has had ample time to reflect on the values of her former employer.

In February 2023, she was let go from her role as a learning support worker to year ten students – girls at the start of their GCSE studies – for which she was paid £1,000 a week for four days work.

‘We’d formed good relationships,’ she says. ‘I would come into my office and find a little note saying, “You’re the best, thank you”.

But despite her popularity, she was dismissed after being told that her ‘online presence was not in line with the school’s ethos and mission statements’.

Given the school’s stated commitment to Christian values, had Gozen been posting provocative selfies on her Facebook page? Expressing sympathy with terrorist organisations on Instagram?

Not quite, although in today’s world Gozen’s web presence is arguably even more inflammatory.

Her posts on two personal Instagram accounts, one under her name and one called ‘wifeinthewaiting’, frequently celebrate traditional values, including the value of chastity before marriage and the nuclear family.

One offering, however, was deemed to be too contentious.

Called ‘King of my Life’, it featured a Muslim woman discussing the way she had found joy in submitting to her husband – posted, Gozen insists, not as a prescription for marital happiness but to generate debate on the nature of marriage.

Debate or otherwise, this post in particular, along with the idea of being a ‘wife in the waiting’ was enough, Gozen claims, for the school’s head Emma Loveland to dismiss her without further ado.

That decision is currently undergoing the scrutiny of an employment tribunal, following Gozen’s decision to launch an action against the school seeking damages for breach of contract and wrongful dismissal.

Certainly, the incident raises the question of whether devout Christianity is now, as Gozen fervently believes, ‘the last cultural taboo’.

‘We talk a lot as a society about being inclusive, but apparently that means inclusive of everything apart from traditional values,’ she says. 

‘I can’t help thinking that if I had been posting about LGBTQ culture or other things that are trendy on my social media accounts then they would probably have made a virtue of it instead of getting rid of me.

‘Instead, it seems the world we live in right now is completely rejecting all things Christian.

‘What hurts most is there wasn’t even a discussion about what I might have intended or meant. It doesn’t feel fair, and I think the school needs to be accountable for their actions.’

But Gozen is certainly no sackcloth and ashes Christian. In person she is lively and even (whisper it) fun.

Dressed in heels and a bright jacket, her hair immaculately styled and beautifully made up, she would look at home in any glamorous city wine bar. She likes nice clothes and nights out with friends.

Where her path departs from many other women her age, however, is that she is also a passionate believer in the word of God, having started going to church in her early twenties.

Until then, as a second generation Turkish Cypriot raised in Enfield, north London, Gozen was Muslim, although only culturally so.

‘The only time we went to a mosque was for a funeral,’ she says. ‘We had alcohol in the house and I went to a Church of England primary and secondary school.’

Her path to finding her faith, she explains now, has its origins in an adolescence and early womanhood that was defined by being diagnosed aged 12 with Hidradenitis suppurativa, a chronic skin condition that causes painful lumps and abscesses under the skin.

‘At some points the lumps under my arms and on my legs were so big I couldn’t even raise my arms or walk,’ she says. 

‘I had weeping blisters and sores on my face and chest which is very tough for a teenage girl. I was very badly bullied.’

Treated with steroids and antibiotics, as well as surgery, Gozen, an aspiring lawyer, spent most of her teens in and out of hospital but still managed to graduate with a law degree from Nottingham Trent University and undertake her bar vocational course.

Then, aged 22, she had what she describes as a ‘transformative’ appointment with her longstanding consultant. It sounds utterly devastating.

‘He was a very senior professor in dermatology, and he had been my consultant for over five years,’ she recalls. 

‘At this time, we’d tried every drug, and I’d had multiple procedures. In front of his team he looked at me and said “This is ghastly. I don’t know what to do with you.”

‘Somehow I held my composure, but as soon as I left, I fell to the floor and wept. Because if he was saying that, then what hope was there? My family and friends always knew me as very positive, but I just felt so overwhelmed.’

The experience triggered a bout of depression which eventually prompted her to accompany her mother to the non-denominational church she had started to attend.

‘She’d asked before and I’d always said no, but on this occasion I felt like I had zero hope elsewhere,’ Gozen recalls.

What she found there was a faith that she believes changed her life.

‘I just sat with the scripture and let it transform my mind, and once I found that peace it helped me heal both mentally and physically,’ she says.

Today, certainly, there is little evidence of her once debilitating condition, bar a few scars on her jawline and chest.

‘My consultants couldn’t believe it,’ she says. As her health flourished, so did her career: following a master’s degree in human rights, Gozen started working as a solicitor.

‘I would represent people that were detained under the Mental Health Act, helping them find a voice,’ she says.

In parallel, she also set up a social media account called ‘wifeinthewaiting’ in the wake of the breakdown of a four-year long relationship, which led her to focus on what marriage meant to her.

The relationship, which had unfolded while she was still suffering from her condition, had nearly ended in an engagement, but instead the couple went their separate ways.

‘He was a lovely guy, but we were going in different directions,’ she says. Nonetheless, it made her reflect.

‘I studied scriptures about how to be a wife, and the purpose of a wife,’ she says. ‘I believe in line with scripture that a wife is a helper to achieve the vision of a family, but that this will look different in every family.

‘I’m all about empowering women to make their own choices and to know themselves – because when you know who you are or your purpose, then you’ll know who to align with in marriage, if that’s what you want.’

Today, as then, the content she shares on ‘wifeinthewaiting’ seems nothing more than sweetly anachronistic in today’s secular world.

One typical post reads ‘The Lord declares that not one shall lack her mate’ under the picture of a bride and groom, while in others, she talks about praying for your future spouse.

But then, in March 2020, Gozen decided to make a career change: after volunteering as a mentor with Enfield Council she took on a full-time job as an outreach mentor, working with schools.

‘My family thought I was crazy,’ she admits. ‘However, I considered it a privilege to provide young people with the support they needed.’

As part of her work, she regularly visited St Anne’s to help support students going through a difficult time.

‘I loved it,’ she says. ‘I was being the person that I wish I’d had while going through my challenges at school.’

In turn, the school seemed to value her: ‘The headteacher would often commend me on the work I had done with the students.’

Certainly, Gozen’s impact was sufficient for her to be offered a role within the school, and in September 2022 she started as a Consultant Pastoral Manager to Year 10 students.

As part of her job she would give assemblies or mentor girls.

‘We were allowed to share scriptures from the Bible, but it was practical teaching – how to be a good friend, how to learn to love yourself. It made a huge difference and lots of people commented on the positive impact I had on the girls,’ she recalls.

That is, until February this year, when Gozen was called into a meeting with deputy head, Jo Sanders.

‘She said that the meeting was about my social media pages and that it had been brought to their attention that there were some concerning posts,’ Gozen recalls.

One of them, on her personal Instagram account, featured the King of My Life Video in which a woman in a headscarf describes submitting to her husband.

‘Ms Sanders commented that if a man were to say what the women had said, it would be misogynistic and that it was provocative like Andrew Tate, although I didn’t know who she was referring to,’ she says.

Tate, of course, is a self-proclaimed violent misogynist. While many might not agree with the stance of the King of My Life video, it appears more contentious than aggressively provocative.

‘When I posted, it was to create discussion, not to say this is the ideal life,’ Gozen insists. ‘In it, the woman talks about how, if her husband wants her to fix his dinner, she will do it, if he wants her to sit down, she’ll sit down.

‘But her point was that she chose this man, he loves her, and she knew who he was before she married him.

‘Her question, which I reposted as a caption, was what are you willing to do as a wife for the relationship you say you want?

‘Many will see a woman that’s suppressed; I see a powerful woman who makes her own choices.

‘Submission basically means agreeing or yielding to another person’s way of doing things, and we do it all the time. We submit to laws, for example.’

Either way, the senior team at St Anne’s did not like it and Gozen – who insists it was only in that meeting that she discovered her personal social media pages should be private – agreed to take it down.

‘No one ever bothered to ask me what I meant by it, but my view was if it was causing such a problem, then sure,’ she says.

However, while she took it down from her most popular account under the name Lady Gozen, she did not remove it from the wifeinthewaiting account, believing that this was what had been requested of her.

It meant that several days later, Gozen was called into another meeting, this time with the headteacher Emma Loveland, who complained that the video was still available.

‘I replied that I had taken it down from my personal Instagram page as that had the biggest following, but I was happy to take it off the others too,’ she says.

At this point, Gozen says, she was told that there was a bigger problem in relation to the mere existence of an account called wifeinthewaiting.

‘When I asked what that meant, the head said it seemed to suggest that, unless you’re a wife, you’re of no worth,’ she says. ‘I told her that clearly wasn’t true, as I wasn’t married and I definitely regard myself with worth.’

In documents submitted to the tribunal, Emma Loveland subsequently stated that she had received two complaints from parents, one from an ‘angry father’ who said that Gozen’s social media posts were contrary to the school’s mission statement and another who said he ‘sends my child to you for a 21st century education, not an 18th century one’.

Gozen says she was told that she must disconnect the wifeinthewaiting account from her own name on all social media. She insists she did everything she could that night to fulfil this requirement.

‘At this point I honestly had no idea that the axe was hanging over my head,’ says Gozen. 

‘But when I went to see Emma the next day she said it was too late, I was still linked and I was global. I said that 30,000 followers was hardly global and it can take a few weeks to reset algorithms, but she said it was too much of a problem.’

Gozen was then told her services were no longer required with immediate effect, leaving her in tears.

Asked to go immediately, Gozen said she did not have the chance to say goodbye to her peers or pupils.

‘It honestly felt like a dagger to the chest,’ she says. ‘It also felt profoundly unfair.’

It is why, after months of reflection, she decided to bring legal action, helped by the Christian Legal Centre, who have taken on her case.

Andrea Williams, chief executive of the Christian Legal Centre, said: ‘It’s ironic that Gozen was sacked for upholding biblical teaching on the nature of marriage in a Catholic school. 

‘She seems to believe more in marriage than those that run the school who seemed determined all week to promote their new religion of inclusion and diversity.

‘That inclusion did not extend to her. We’re proud of Gozen for staying strong despite the pressure and being a fearless advocate for Christianity and its message on marriage.’

Today, Gozen has started another one day a week mentoring role in a non educational setting, and also works as a counsellor, but she misses her time in school.

‘I know I was making a difference,’ she says. ‘It seems so sad that was cut short because Christianity has become a dirty word.’

St Anne’s Catholic High School for Girls did not respond to requests for comment.