A Christian father of four who has served as a teacher and care worker since coming to Great Britain as a refugee in 2003 has lost the appeal of his expulsion from the Sheffield University Masters of Social Work program for expressing his views on homosexuality.
Francis Ngole, 39, told media reporters he would take the university to court with the help of the Christian Legal Centre, a pro-bono advocacy organization that defends Christian freedom of religion and freedom of expression. “I feel and my legal team feels that the decision reached was strongly discriminatory. But I’m clearly not fighting for myself. I am fighting for other Christians. Christianity is being driven underground.”
Ngole’s offense was to participate in an online discussion last September about the jailing of Kentucky country clerk Kim Davis for refusing to sign same-sex “marriage” licences. Ngole quoted the passage from Leviticus 20:13 describing homosexual intercourse as an “abomination” and prescribing the death penalty.
“Members of the committee expressed serious concerns about the level of insight you had demonstrated with regards to the comments you posted on Facebook,” the university told Ngole. The problem was not with his opinions of homosexuality per se but with “your act of publicly posting those views such that it will have an effect on your ability to carry out a role as a social worker. … This action was an extremely poor judgement on your part and had transgressed boundaries which are not deemed appropriate for someone entering the social work profession.”
Ngole appealed, and according to Ade Amooba of the Christian Legal Centre, who supported him at the second hearing, “They seemed to be sympathetic and I thought it went favourably.” But when the day for releasing the decision was postponed, Amooba began to think the appeal body had been pressured from above. In the event, they supported Ngole’s expulsion.
Andrea Williams, the founder and director of the Christian Legal Centre, stated that expulsion was an “inappropriate and disproportionate response to private statements.” She added, “Universities are supposed to be places of free expression where big ideas about life are debated in freedom.
Ngole, a refugee from Cameroon who has earned a teaching degree and a BSW since arriving in Britain, said, “I have been a teacher and a care worker and I have worked with [homosexuals] and I have never treated them differently. Nobody has ever complained about me.”
“God doesn’t have a problem with the people in same sex marriage, he has a problem with sin. And I don’t have a problem with the people either. God loves them. God created us all,” he said in a media statement.
But if Ngole can’t work as a social worker he doesn’t know what he will do. “God has put it into my heart to help people. I thought I could do that best as a social worker.” He believes it will be “incredibly hard to find a job” anywhere in Britain because of this case. “But I’m confident God will look after me.”
Williams said Ngole’s legal team had not decided on what legal strategy to follow but noted that because Sheffield U was a public university its decisions were subject to judicial review.
She said Ngole’s case was similar to that of the Exeter University Christian Union’s successful fight with the same school’s student society in 2007 that led to the creation of the Christian Legal Centre. The student union had refused to recognize the club because it denied membership to non-believers, a position supported by an adjudicator. But when the Christian group took the case to court, the student union backed down and made special rules for all religious clubs.
Another relevant case that reached the country’s top court was that of Adrian Smith, a public housing official in Manchester demoted in 2012 after expressing opposition to same-sex “marriage” on Facebook. The High Court ruled that Smith’s employer had committed a “serious and repudiatory breach of trust” and that there was no right in Britain to not be offended.
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