Israel Folau and Free Speech

Firestorm! An Australian sports figure writes on his social media platform his own opinion. The sports world in Australia goes ballistic. The media brands Israel Folau a bigot and homophobe. There are calls for his being fired for declaring his opinion about who is on their way to hell. Wow, let's sit down and consider what this is about and what it is not about.

Some say that he is welcome to have his own opinion, but he shouldn't declare that opinion if the content might offend someone. Some don't want him to express any opinion at all if it is 'out of bounds'  Wait a minute, who decides which of your opinions are worthy or proper or agreeable? Do you really want the thought police 'out there?'

Imagine if Anthony Mundine or Khoder Nasser, Usman Khawaja or Fawad Ahmed were being told they couldn't say that homosexuality is out of bounds in their religion. Muslims hold that as one of their beliefs. Would their sports association dismiss them for that, too?

Someone is crossing the line here, and it's not Folau. Or did he?

You see, the issue, they say, is that Qantas and Rugby AU have said that their sportsmen are not to say things which will cause some fans to withdraw their support. Folau signed an agreement with that position less than three months ago. So there are TWO issues, one the signed agreement, and the 2nd is the matter of Rugby telling their players what they can or cannot say.

Commentator Alan Jones weighed in. News.com.au reported today 

"Folau has found an ally in broadcast heavyweight Alan Jones after Rugby Australia vowed to terminate the contract of the Wallabies star after he posted an image which included anti-gay sentiment to Instagram this week. Folau, 30, was widely slammed for calling on “drunks, homosexuals, adulterers, liars, fornicators, thieves, atheists and idolaters” to repent for their sins or else “hell awaits” them.

Jones, a former coach of our national rugby team, is pointing the finger at Rugby Australia. “Rugby Australia are only worried about the quids, they’re only worried about the sponsorship,” Jones said on his 2GB radio show on Friday morning.“That’s why they asked Israel to sign a contract in which he wouldn’t say this and he wouldn’t say that and that his views would be consistent with (Rugby Australia sponsor) Qantas.“He’s made comments about religion — who will end up heaven and who will end up in hell. Who cares? It’s an opinion. I don’t necessarily agree with what he said, by the way, but a lot of people don’t agree with what I say.

“We’re going down a very, very narrow road here and this has gone on and on and on this crap. I’m telling you, out there people are terrified of saying anything. They are frightened, they don’t know what they can say. We’re on a slippery slope here ... it’s got nothing to do with Israel, or rugby, or religion, or homosexuals, or whatever. Where are we in this country on free speech?”

Sports figures worldwide regularly make comments about their beliefs, just like movie folks accepting their Oscars. In the US, sports and religion, especially after a significant victory, go hand in hand.  The US media wrote this about former star player Tim Tebow: "Evangelical quarterback Tim Tebow is known for demonstrating his faith on the football field, including wearing Bible verses on his eye black in college and dropping to a knee in prayer (launching the meme “Tebowing”). The son of Baptist missionaries, he spurred a movement to let homeschooled athletes compete on public school teams and starred in a pro-family Focus on the Family ad during the 2010 Super Bowl. At the University of Florida, Tebow won the 2007 Heisman Trophy. He went on to play for the Denver Broncos and New York Jets in the NFL."

Michael Chang won the French Open when he was 17 (still the youngest male to win a major) (see this link: /) Chang has always been outspoken about his faith in Jesus, beginning in 1989, when he won the French and then told the interviewing commentator, “I thank the Lord Jesus Christ, because without Him, I am nothing."

Social media is exploding with calls for Folau to be gone, and others who like this blog, are standing with Folau. Some religionists and prime ministers, even Christian ones, are not speaking up as loudly as they might in defense of Folau's right to free speech. Listen to this from Lyle Shelton today on the radio. AUDIO.  What happens if gagging becomes the norm? 

God, give Israel Folau great wisdom and terrific lawyers.

God, help our country to calm down about the religion of non-offense and learn to disagree agreeably. 

We really need help.

#OneWayReligiousTolerance

Who can mourn? Orlando shooting

Miranda Devine of the Daily Telegraph wrote this piece which is worthy of republishing. Her sensibility is clear. We are all humans, and what aches our hearts is that anyone can do such evil in our world today. It's not because I'm pro-this or anti-that which makes me compassionate. I'm human. That's it. And our morality shaped by thousands of years of a biblical narrative helps me care about others. Her conclusion is "Empathising with people who are different from you is morally sound."

Here is her article from 15 June :
ANYONE with normal human feelings who has watched one of the Islamic State propaganda videos of homosexual men being thrown off buildings could not fail to be horrified and saddened.

You can’t help imagine how the poor man felt as he was dragged to that rooftop, bound and gagged, knowing his fate. And as he fell, not struggling, feet in black socks pointed skyward, in his last seconds of life, you would experience a wave of sympathy and love for him.

This is empathy and is what keeps us human, the shared fraternity with other people. It is when we start dividing ourselves up on identity grounds, and lose our sense of common humanity, that poison starts, and hatred flourishes.

That’s where war comes from. It’s what led to ISIS and Hitler’s concentration camps, where you dehumanise people in order to commit atrocities on them.

And it’s what Orlando killer Omar Mateen did. Before he murdered 50 innocents with an assault rifle in a gay club in Orlando Florida on the weekend, he dehumanised them.

An American-born Muslim, he pledged allegiance to ISIS during a call to police from ­inside the club mid-massacre, and referred to the Islamist Boston bombers as his “homeboys”. He had previously been under FBI attention for associating with jihadists. When a teenager he celebrated the 9/11 attacks on New York. He has claimed to be a relative of Osama bin Laden and a member of Hezbollah. His Afghan-born father has made bizarre videos supporting the Taliban.

So it’s not hard to figure out how Mateen dehumanised his victims when he entered that gay nightclub.

The Koran decrees that homosexuality be punished by death. We see that edict played out in the pure, Koran-abiding, Islamic State in Syria, where homosexuals are thrown off buildings. We see it in Yemen, Iran, Iraq, Mauritania, Nigeria, Qatar, Somalia, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, the 10 countries in the world where homosexuals are executed. All are Muslim.

That is what you call homophobia, as taught in the Koran, as espoused by imams such as Farrokh Sekaleshfa, now a guest in Sydney, who gave a sermon in Mateen’s hometown Orlando just two months ago, saying gays must die, “it’s the compassionate thing to do”.

No, it’s not hard to figure out where Mateen’s violent homophobia sprang from.

Yet, the politically correct Left seem disappointed he turned out to be a Muslim and are ready to believe his father’s claim that the attack had nothing to do with religion, but that his son was just ­angered after seeing two men kissing.

They try to claim the massacre solely as a homophobic hate crime that “we all” have to combat.

This was another Islamist attack from the Stone Age on western civilisation, on our plurality and freedom to say what we want and live how we please. Gay clubs are a manifestation of that plurality.

Yet, unless you are gay, ­according to the ABC, the Mardi Gras collective and Fairfax and Guardian columnists, you’re not allowed to mourn and be horrified by the tragedy, and if you are a social conservative who opposes same-sex marriage you are as much an enemy of LGBTIQ people as the Islamist who pulled the trigger.

It would be as if after the Islamist attack on the Bataclan in Paris, only rock fans could mourn.

The reason we mourn for the victims is because they were people, just like us. But the insinuation is that you can only care if you identify as ­belonging to the group to which the victims belong.

Nothing better proves the divisiveness of “progressive” agendas than politically correct Leftists claiming a monopoly on mourning. They were busy trying to erase Islam from the equation, yesterday, yet, Chris Neff, a lecturer in public policy at the University of Sydney, told the SMH that politicians had “erased the queerness”.

“This was not an ­assault on all freedoms, this was an assault on queer freedoms and on queer identity and this was targeting to kill 50 people who were queer.”

Of course it was. That’s self-evident. It was an attack on a gay nightclub by an adherent of a religious ideology that throws gays off buildings.

But, that doesn’t gel with the Left’s hierarchy of victimhood so they try to deflect blame on their bogeymen, Christian conservatives.

Cynical opportunists of the Left were no better than ­Donald Trump when they used the massacre in Orlando to push their agenda.

The ABC’s PM program ­directly linked the massacre to the same-sex marriage plebiscite, quoting Fran Bowren, co-convener of the Lesbian and Gay Mardi Gras, saying Orlando was a “warning note that we should all be heeding” before the plebiscite.

“The No arguments are very personal, they’re very personally attacking, and they are targeting individual people … opening the door for the hate speech of the No side is, I think, very dangerous.”

Upholders of traditional marriage stay silent. You’re not just wrong, you’re evil.

John Birmingham in the SMH blamed conservatives opposed to Safe Schools program and same sex marriage, linking them, but not Islamist imams preaching death to gays, to “the consequences of hatred (which) always ends in blood”.

New Matilda ranted: “Malcolm Turnbull Is Trying to Turn Queerphobia Into Islamophobia” after the PM referred to “evidence that the killer was linked to Islamist extremism”.

Jenna Price in the SMH wrote: “What I’m looking for is leadership that says we are all sorry … I don’t want you to pretend that this is any other kind of terrorism than the one that has existed for ever, gay hate and gay murder.”

Guardian columnist Owen Jones walked off the set of Sky UK because he was offended by a journalist saying Orlando was an attack on us all. “You don’t understand this because you aren’t gay,” he snapped.

What happened to empathy and human solidarity? What a world where we only care about people like us. Empathising with people who are different from you is morally sound. Otherwise there are no safeguards when political inclinations change. If you don’t have safeguards of reason and universal conscience you can easily be persuaded by some demagogue or ideology to do evil things. You can see some people as not fully human.

The bloody consequences are evident in Orlando.