advocacy for beginners

 

At 11.30pm I am browsing through the news items on an internet feed via a mobile phone.

My eye falls on a particular story.

In Ireland a teacher has been jailed at the request of a school for insisting on attending work after a previous court injunction obtained by the school forbid him to do so.

The school had sought the previous injunction because the teacher refused to use the pronouns "they" and "them" instead of "he" and "him" for a boy teenager who is said to think he is a girl in a boy's body.

The school is styled Wilson's Hospital and was purportedly founded in the 18th century to educate the sons of Protestant gentlemen and at the time also functioned as a hospital.

It is run by the Christian church known as the Church of Ireland which was itself established by King Henry the Eighth in the 15th century when he wanted to dump his first wife and the Pope wouldn't sanction his divorce from her.

Later, rather than dumping em and setting up new churches to endorse his decision, Henry would simply cut their heads off.

He got through six wives all told between divorces, dumpings, new churches and head hackings.

But I digress.

Wilson's Hospital school has about 400 teenagers on its books at present and is located near Mullingar in County Westmeath.

They study up to the level of the examination styled in Ireland the Leaving Certificate.

So this is the bunch having people jailed for not endorsing transgenderism.

A little vein trembles on my forehead.

Anything I can do?

Ho hum.

A few clicks on the internet later, I had found the appropriate phone number, picked up my phone and dialled the school at (044) 937 1115.

My intention was to leave a voice message protesting that the school had sought to jail a teacher in such circumstances.

Presumably they wouldn't answer the phones so close to midnight.

Yes.

I'll just leave a nice, gentle, voice message to register my protest.

Ah me.

How innocent I am,

They do things differently at schools for Protestant gentlemen.

The phone was answered.

A woman's voice laced with a certain somnolent weariness croaked a greeting.

I could picture her sitting up in bed and leaning on an elbow to take my call.

"Hello?" she said.

"Er, I'm sorry for ringing so late at night," I began. "I didn't realise anyone would answer. I thought I'd get an answering machine."

"It's okay," said the woman. "I can take your call."

"Er, eh, um," said I with measured precision. "Well, I, er, I just wanted to express my shock at the jailing of Mr Enoch Burke and to express, well, my horror and my, er, consternation that your school would actually seek to have him jailed for refusing to call a boy a girl. It's a monstrous miscarriage of justice and quite quite ludicrous. That man is probably the best teacher, the most noble mentor and the sole insightful counsellor, that child has contact with at the moment because Mr Burke is the only one daring to oppose the delusional conformism which is causing other adults to acquiesce to the child's supposedly willing adoption of a transgender identity and the attendant decision to have a mutilating sex change operation.. Sex change operations don't work. They should never be performed on children or adults. I am frankly disgusted that you excluded the teacher from the school. I am shocked that you would have him jailed in these circumstances.I am quite astonished that you have done this. I think your behaviour is appalling."

"I'm the school night nurse," said the woman.

"Oh, oh, er, alright."

"I'll pass on your message but I'm a bit tired," she said.

"We all have our crosses to bear," I told her.

This seemed to cheer her up a bit.

"We do all have  our crosses to bear," she said meaningfully.

"But just think," I said, "perhaps one day when I'm famous you'll be boasting to your grandchildren that you actually got a midnight phone call from that famous Kilcullen nut job."

This cheered her up further and we parted on what seemed to me good terms.

I love nurses.