Wonder what people's thoughts are on this.
Enoch Burke comes from an Irish family of more or less religious evangelists. They're a bit of a nutty bunch (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burke_family_(Castlebar) )
Enoch was a teacher at Wilson's Hospital School, a Church of Ireland co-educational boarding school in County Westmeath. One student requested that the students and staff use 'they/them' pronouns to refer to the student, along with the new name the student had chosen, and the school, in accordance with its policy, agreed to do this.
Enoch took exception to this. He interrupted a church service to voice his disagreement with the decision to agree with the student's new name and choice of pronouns, and with the concept of transgenderism in general. At another function after the service, things got heated between him and the principal, and as she tried to walk away from him, he followed her and kept pressing the issue/confronting her.
As a result of this he was suspended by the school until a disciplinary meeting could be held. Despite this suspension, he kept turning up at school, so they got an injunction to stop him doing that. Ignoring both the injunction, and a later court order, he continued to turn up, and ended up in court for non-compliance with the injunction. He was remanded in prison for contempt of court, and stayed there for more than 2 months, as he declined a few opportunities to purge his contempt, arguing that transgenderism was against scripture and he would obey God's laws, not man's law.
He was released shortly before Christmas, at least partly due to the judge's belief that was was effectively exploiting his own imprisonment for his own gain. On January 19, the disciplinary hearing was held and he was dismissed from his position. Since then he has turned up and either tried to enter the buildings, or simply stood outside the closed school gates for hours on end. Yesterday the judge imposed a fine of €700 per day for each day he turns up outside the school.
The case has, predictably, been picked up by a lot of conservative media and used as an example of wokeness and loony lefties and all that. The response to this is that it's really about the way that he confronted the principal, rather than raising his disagreement in a professional and mature way. That is legally true, but it's hard (for me anyway) to avoid the conclusion that all of the attention on this is because of the divisive nature of the debate over transgenderism itself.
https://www.thesun.ie/wp-content/upl...0790871361.jpg