This is the news from the ABC, or at least a list of the newsiest parts of the Folau documentary two-parter, which started last Thursday.
The Silencing: The big reveal comes from Israel Folau’s Wallaby team mate Samu Kerevi who reveals that pasifika players in the Australian Rugby team were told to be silent after the controversy started after Folau tweeted a rough translation of 1 Corinthians 6:9.
“We got told from our media teams, not to say anything about supporting izzy or to say anything at all. After the coming days, everyone who did not support him was all over the news,” Kerevi says in the documentary. “They were allowed to be interviewed, they were allowed to say that they don’t support the message. That’s what kind of annoyed us and made us angry. It was like “hey you’re allowing one side of the story to be spoken about and to be supported but not the other. How come they are allowed to speak and we are not?”
Rugby Australia dropped the ball: News Corp sports writer Jamie Panaram discusses Rugby Australia’s blunder: “They’ve done the deal. [re-signing Folau their best player after his first tweet on homosexuality.] Then Rugby Australia have realised, we have not included any social media clauses in this contract. They’ve then retrospectively gone back and sent another letter to [Folau’s manager] Isaac Moses saying “Oh, by the way can you and Israel sign this letter saying this is what he can and can not do on social media.” Now the deal has already been done. Israel’s happy with it. He’s not going to add any more to it . So there it sat.”
Later, Folau tweets the 1 Corinthians tweet, and controversy erupts.
The lawyer: A lot of the debate ignored the fact that there was a law in the country that said you can’t be sacked because of your religion.” Joseph Bornstein employment lawyer. “But when brand management and the mob combine, these things fly out the window.”
Later in the documentary, he describes himselve as becomonig uncomfortable and under pressure as a person on the progressive side of politics standing for a balance of rights.
The rugby writer on Folau’s character: “There is a simplicity to him [Folau]” says The Sydney Morning Herald’s chief rugby reporter Georgina Robinson. “Not in any intellectual way – he’s a bright guy – but there’s a simplicity to his conception of how these things transpired. He genuinely means it when he says that he does not wish harm on another human being. That he might not agree with their sexual preference but he still loves them. I mean that’s a genuine deeply held belief. And not a throwaway line.”
The doco cuts to Israel Folau talking with Alan Jones: “It certainly comes from a place of love. It’s nothing personal, you know. And just wanting to share that message of love, that God is really trying to extend that to all people.”
Robinson again: “On the other side of the coin there’s a naivety to that. And a wilful naivety, to somehow think that the world can understand that he loves everyone but also needs to say that gay people are going to hell. In his religious faith that makes perfect sense. In a secular society that makes no sense at all.”
Concern about Folau’s brand of Christiaity: disquiet by other Christian players in the Wallaby team and their families is confirmed in the documentary. This awakened concern in. the wider Christian commun ity.
Writer Malcolm Knox on the motivations of the Australian Christian Lobby (ACL): He sees the ACL forming an alliance with Israel Folau as self interested.
“Martyn Iles and the ACL: was clearly playing a much bigger game,” says Knox. “Their bigger game was positioning themselves as an essential partner to the Morrison coalition government. They had the idea that the ACL had delivered the federal election to the coalition.”
The Other Cheek does not know whether the ACL actually thought that they were essential to the Morrison government, although they certainly aspired to be inflential. Those aspirations were dashed with the failure of the Morrison Government to deliver the religious freedom legislation.
The ACL certainly made heavy demands of the Government in its last weeks as to what Religious Discrimination Bill would be acceptable particularly around the issue of transgender students.
Whether this was out of a sense of entitlement, conviction or desperation The Other Cheek simply does not know. Likely a mix of these factors. Then in the Federal, Victorian, NSW and SA elections it is hard to see the ACL’s influence – possibly because the tide was running in the progressive direction each time. The Israel Folau case was an example of the tide, the political circumstances favouring the ACL prior to the 2019 election. The electoral cycle since 2019 has run the other way. It will turn at some stage, don’t count the ACL out.
But it may be that the combination of Israel Folau, and Scott Morrison caused religious conservatives to overplay their hand during the last federal coalition governament. If the Israel Folau case played a hand in that over confidence, the ACL might need to re-assess the period when Martyn Iles was building its base and tripling its mail list.
Image: Folau leaps Australia v Scotland 2017/ Wikimedia
If prejudice or racism or anti-Semitism is a “deeply held belief” that comes from a place of “love”, is it excusable? One can’t remain ignorant of the history of persecution behind such statements of dogma. Or perhaps we confuse ignorance for innocence.