This week, when he was returned to Dublin’s Mountjoy jail for the third time in two years, Irish schoolteacher Enoch Burke was hailed by his many supporters as a martyr for free speech.
He was, according to some, a very modern victim of a tyrannical ‘woke’ establishment riding roughshod over an individual’s right to religious liberty.
The row between Burke, his school and the Irish state began in June 2022 when staff at Wilson’s Hospital School in County Westmeath were instructed by the head teacher that one of their students was transitioning and wanted to be referred to as ‘they/them.’
Burke, who comes from a well-known evangelical Christian family based in Mayo, refused that request and insisted that he would not bow down to this new ideology.
Given the fact that the student in question was not actually in any of Burke’s classes, where he taught History and German, it was a rather moot point.
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