News (World)

Teacher jailed for third time after protesting trans “ideology” at school that fired him

Enoch Burke, an evangelical Christian, has martyred himself with 400+ days spent behind bars for trespassing on school grounds.
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Teacher jailed for third time after protesting trans “ideology” at school that fired him
Evangelical Christian Enoch Burke Photo: Screenshot X

Irish teacher Enoch Burke, an evangelical Christian opposed to transgender identities, has been arrested for a third time after trying to trespass once more onto the campus of Wilson’s Hospital School. The high school suspended him in 2022 and later fired him for refusing to address a student by their personal pronouns. The school subsequently barred him from the premises and got a court order to keep him off campus.

Burke claims he’s being silenced for his Christian beliefs and has made it his life’s work to cast himself as a martyr over the issue. He has already spent more than 400 days in prison for defying a court order to stay away from the school, which is located 50 miles west of Dublin.

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Following his termination from the school, Burke appealed the decision.

After his release from Dublin’s Mountjoy Prison in June, Burke allegedly resumed stalking the school when the fall term began late last month. Attorneys for the school asked the courts for protection from Burke’s disruptions.

On Monday, officers with Ireland’s Garda (the national police force) “executed a High Court order in Mullingar, Co. Westmeath,” according to a spokesperson. “A man was detained by An Garda Síochána and has now appeared before the High Court.”

Video of the arrest posted to Burke’s X account shows the teacher being loaded into a vehicle as he claims to police, “I have a right to my job. I have a right to work here. I have a right to be here, and not to tell students that have to take puberty blockers.”

A clutch of Burke’s supporters verbally harassed officers as they executed the court order.

In the same post, Burke’s defenders tar the magistrate in his case, Judge Barry O’Donnell, with charges of bias for representing Ireland’s Child Protection agency as a barrister. The state service is “saturated with LGBT ideology,” they wrote, using as an example a request to staff to familiarize themselves with drag performers, and “making acceptance of LGBT and transgender ideology a condition for fostering children.”

“What a mockery,” they wrote, “to expect Enoch Burke, a Christian teacher, to sit before this man and expect justice.”

Should Burke again argue he’s being silenced because of his Christian beliefs, he’ll likely get the same response from O’Donnell as he did from another Irish High Court judge, who said last September, according to the Associated Press, that “it is an insult to every law-abiding citizen for someone who is the subject of a court order to decide, unilaterally, that it should be ignored.”

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