The story of an Irish teacher being jailed for refusing to comply with a request from his school to refer to a girl using the pronoun ‘they’ and use that person’s new name has received global attention.  

Although the story is not so straightforward as presented by both his supporters and detractors, the substantive issue of whose belief systems are to take precedence is getting lost in the conversation. Ultimately, this is what it is. A clash of conscience and belief.  

Enoch Burke comes from a well-known conservative, Evangelical Christian family in the west of Ireland. He has nine brothers and sisters, and many of them are not afraid to stand up very publicly in defence of their beliefs. There is even a Wikipedia page dedicated to them.  

The facts of the matter are that Enoch Burke is in jail for refusing to abide by a court injunction to desist from attending the school where he has been suspended from teaching, on administrative leave. The administrative leave arose pending the resolution of a disciplinary process which arose due to Mr Burke’s behaviour in refusing to accept instruction from the school to address a transgender child by their preferred name and to use the pronoun ‘they’ instead of ‘he’.  

This series of events colours how the issue is being narrated, not just in Ireland but outside as well. His supporters are determined to maintain the narrative that he is now in jail because of his refusal to compromise his beliefs and to accept a fantasy that a boy can be a girl. His detractors want to maintain that he is imprisoned simply because he refused to comply with the Court injunction and this is the natural consequence of that. Reuters has even produced a ‘fact-check’ on the issue. 

There are those in-between, uncomfortable that someone should ultimately end up in Ireland’s most well known prison, Mountjoy, for these actions, but feel that out of basic decency to the child, he should really just have complied. The latter is a common thread from both conservative (right-wing) commentators such as John McGuirk at gript.ie and liberals (left-wing) commentator Matt Cooper on extra.ie.  

While Cooper engages in some sophistry claiming ‘Enoch Burke did not spend the last two nights in Mountjoy prison because of his religious beliefs but as a consequence of them’, his attempts underline how difficult it is to separate the substantive issue from the procedural one. And Cooper, like others, plays the narrative that it is Enoch Burke who is seeking to impose his (religious) beliefs on others, yet it is Burke that has ended up in jail, making a mockery of the popular assertion that he is not being compelled to speak in a particular manner. 

For Cooper, Burke was simply wrong in not doing what was requested. This is central then to how he – and others – view Burke’s refusal to comply with his suspension, and subsequent court order. On each step of the path to prison, Burke was asked to tacitly submit that his beliefs are subject first to the law of the land rather than to God. For the committed, this is the interface where rendering to Caesar meets rendering to God. It is a grey area to determine whether submitting to the process is admitting that the process is legitimate in the first place. 

Irrespective of the various perceptions, it is clear that Burke is a prisoner of conscience and that is an important point. Burke is being asked to choose between liberty or violating his conscience. For many commentators, both in traditional and social media, there is little sympathy for his predicament. Derided by some as a ‘loon’ along with other less complimentary remarks, when it comes to a clash of cultures, and increasingly, civilisations, the dictum of defending the right to say something, whether you agree or disagree with it, is rapidly becoming an anachronism. 

The losing battle being fought in protecting freedom of religion, free speech and conscience is quickly moving to centre-stage in a clash of belief-systems in the West. The Burke case has brought uncomfortably to the fore that there is both division on these issues and that there is no ready-made solution or compromise to be had that does not require the submission of one side or the other.  

In Ireland, the Minister for Justice, Helen McEntee, has prepared an updated hate-speech bill to be brought to the legislature whose content will be brought more closely into focus with the jailing of a young man for standing by his religious convictions. While many will celebrate that it will be easier for the government to bring prosecutions for ‘hate-speech’, the case of Enoch Burke will highlight the dangers inherent in subjective legislation designed to “let perpetrators know that they will be punished for spreading hate, prejudice and division”. 

What is most evident in this case is that in the space of a few short years, sympathy or empathy for those with religious convictions is quickly being subsumed beneath a new morality that compels acquiescence. What would have been unthinkable less than a decade ago has changed utterly. Norms have been turned on their head quicker than society and the law can adapt. 

According to independent.ie, school principal Niamh McShane claimed in an email that “the right of persons to be called by a name of their choosing and in accordance with their preferred gender was a recognised right”. While this may not be a de-jure right under any law in Ireland, de facto it is becoming the norm.  

If there is one weakness in Mr Burke’s stance, i.e. his determination to be a “Christian in Mountjoy Prison or [I can] be a pagan acceptor of transgenderism outside it,” is that the justice system may avoid having to grapple with the complex question for a little while longer and society will remain in a state of suspended disbelief as it guesses what the law actually is.  

All the while, a young man resides in prison, rapidly brought to court for not violating his conscience on the same day that the Gardai (Ireland’s national police service) are reprimanded by a judge for stating that it will be a number of months before they interview a man accused of sexually abusing his daughter. 

The judicial and political compulsion with policing thought and speech is juxtaposed in Ireland, embarrassingly, with an inability to police real – and violent – crimes, while the judiciary imposes custodial sentences on Enoch Burke while considering jail-time for violent and sexual offences, unnecessary.

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