At the heart of the Israel Folau case are issues of expression and consequence. In particular, Folau’s right to express his religious beliefs about homosexuality on his personal social media channels, and to retain those expressions after his employer Rugby Australia — by its own volition and under pressure from corporate sponsors — made clear they violated its code of conduct.
Folau and his supporters see freedom of speech as the central concern, but the case is more nuanced than that.
The Folau controversy calls on a different idea of religious freedom than what prevailed in days gone by. What used to be understood as a negative right — to be left alone to practise one’s faith and not suffer employment discrimination on the basis of it — is today a more proactive freedom to spread the word of one’s religion.
This is gestured at by Folau’s supporters, even where doing so falls afoul of secular prohibitions on unlawful discrimination, or runs counter to directives from one’s employer without negative consequences, such as being sacked.
In regards to the latter pursuit, Folau is not alone. In 2019, public servant Michaela Banerji lost her bid before the High Court of Australia for the right to tweet views contrary to the public policy of her department, even on her own time and under a pseudonym.
Reversing an Administrative Appeals Tribunal decision that found her sacking was unlawful and at odds with the implied right to freedom of political communication in the Australian constitution, the High Court found that restrictions on public servant free speech were consistent with the constitution’s role in maintaining an apolitical public service.
After the verdict, Banerji’s lawyer claimed the decision would pave the way for private-sector employers to limit the free speech of their workers, something that George Haros, Folau’s lawyer in his case against Rugby Australia, believed was already the case.
According to the recent ABC documentary on the controversy, Folau: “If you are an employee and make a comment on social media or some other forum that negatively impacts the brand of your employer, then there is a lot of law to say that is the basis for termination.”
For the LGBTQIA+ community, the importance of expression is not in dispute. Indeed, one aim of the Pride rounds and codes of conduct adopted by Australian sporting institutions is to reject and inhibit racist, sexist and homophobic slurs on the field, in the locker rooms and coming from the stands — something that a Monash study shows has been partially achieved.
Against older ideas about “sticks and stones” and the need for mutual tolerance, the queer community sees homophobic slurs as “hate speech” incompatible with the contemporary ideal of “inclusion”. Thus, in line with anti-vilification laws and evidence suggesting prolonged exposure to such speech risks individual and societal harms, it supports sanctions designed to get such speech to stop.
This includes being fired, as happened to Folau. As Dan Palmer — in 2020 the first elite rugby player to come out as gay — argues in the ABC documentary: “Israel was free and still is free to say whatever he likes. He didn’t lose any fundamental rights for doing so. He lost his job, as any of us could if we break contractual obligations or contradict the value of our employer.”
But how comfortable should Australians be with this level of employer control over what we say on our own channels in our own time? And how should we think about changes to the ideal worlds each side is pursuing, if it reduces the possibility of detente between them based on mutual tolerance and respect?
This is the problem with the Folau affair: it’s not over. Because in 2023, almost four years after the settlement between Rugby Australia and Folau, we’re no closer to understanding what drove the intensity of the battle, nor to knowing how we can engage the patience, humility and forbearance that characterise a confidently plural society to develop solutions that allow us to move forward.
Queer actor Magda Szubanski is right. The only way back to the confident pluralist society that once described Australia is through rekindling respectful relationships with one another regardless of difference, and turning down the temperature.
“We can each build the other side up as demons … We need to lay down those arguments and attitudes and cultivate that space that is less inflammatory, less antagonist and that might bring forth new ideas,” she said.
I’m ready for some new ideas. Are you?
That’s the problem with religious nutbaggery………………..
It never goes away.
When I feel the need to have to protect myself by telling someone with a religious belief that I’m part of the LGBTQIA+ community to ensure I don’t have to deal with blowback at a later date when they eventually find out, then I don’t see how we can have a reasonable discussion about this.
Many of religious faiths wish my “aflictions” or even me as a person to cease existing. It’s bad enough that they jump up and down about their right to discriminate against us not being strong enough, but if I dared to discriminate against them, or wish their existence to not exist, then its all hurt feelings and whinging.
The LGBTQIA+ community is under serious fire currently. Religious fanatics and white supremacists want us eliminated from the population. Let’s remember here, religion is a CHOICE, being part of the LGBTQIA+ community is a core part of who we are. It’s not something we can change.
If religious folk wish to have a civil discussion about this, then they need to understand that who we are is not negotiable.
I’m not sure religion IS a choice; there’s no way I could choose to be religious tomorrow, any more than you could choose a different sexual orientation.
Can we stop and question the very existence of choice perhaps, given all the relevant evidence is against it?
BTW, religious folk aren’t interested in civility, with their mediaeval morality and indoctrination of defenceless kids.
And their view of others, destined for damnation, all needing salvation… There’s no way you can have a civil discussion with that.
Well, certainly not if those of us who do believe in God aren’t even permitted to speak for ourselves in conversations like this.
We’re apparently supposed to sit here on the sidelines, being relentlessly verballed by you secular soft pap progs as all manner of unholy, inhuman things. Even after explicitly being invited to contribute ‘new ideas’ to conversations on matters like Folau and free speech.
Fine, if that’s what Crikey wants to kid itself is a ‘pluralist, progressive’ debate. It’s your joint, and I’m just a grateful (and stupidly persistent) hillbilly guest. But you should all probably pause and ask yourselves why it is that so many of the Faithful end up just…giving up on such a distorted version of an allegedly ‘inclusive, democratic, intellectually liberal, Enlightened, plurality’. And instead wind up fortressed in their own bigoted, groupthink echo-chambers.
That this thread could so witlessly ignore both LC’s, and even a Magda Szubansky’s, explicit plea for our Each to stop demonising our Other…is both enthralling, and heartbreaking. Oh well, Kimmo. Keep at it, I guess.
Which of the umpteen thousand “Gods” do you believe in?…………..
………and do you consider anyone who chooses to either believe in an alternate “God” or in no “God” at all to be a heretic?
The answer will determine whether or not there is any prospect of rational discussion with you.
How about we start with Crikey publishing my original contribution to this conversation, which LC explicitly invited, in a spirit of plurality? It’s sitting there in Moderation – second time around (we social progs hereabouts tend to copy our hateful screeds these days, we know the Crikey deal). Evidently it’s just too jolly terrifying in its World-Shatteringly Godly Awesomeness to include in a ‘pluralist’ conversation about Faith and free speech on an obscure political website. I’ve had much longer and much, much loonier stuff up :-).
Have a read of that mate. If they’ll let ya. It’ll provide you with a surfeit of starter-info upon which to commence your secular auto-da-fe. O Infallible Mighty Cardinal of the Soft Pap Prog Godless! 🙂 🙂
Oops – ‘soc. cons.’! What a giveaway, Thuce!! 🙂
…or is it? The regressive, reactionary, anti-Enlightenment tenor and tone that (IMO) tends to characterise so much of alleged ‘progressivism’ these days (this thread = case in point)…well, geez, Thuce, it can make a bleeding heart kind of guy (ahem, like moi)…roolly…confused.
So no actual reply………………….
………just a string of distractions.
Quelle surprise.
Thuce, that you’d seriously think I’d respond on demand to your strawman tosh as your obediently-convenient foil, while the platform won’t allow me to make my own discursive good faith contributions to the conversation, is a good encapsulation of what a ‘pluralist liberal-intellectual Enlightenment’ public debate in Australia, at least as defined by the ‘progressive/left’, has been for decades. An increasingly inward-focused, ferocious-but-sterile argument between your own unexamined assumptions and orthodoxies, about your own liberal-intellectual/pluralist ‘objective truths’ and ‘secular divinity’, and your own projected/strawman inventions about any dissent from them at all.
If it makes you feel civically pluralist, conversationally inclusive and progressively liberal-intellectual, then I’m happy for you. But it’s none of those things. Chrs, and my genuine best regrds.
It may come as a nasty shock to you, but Cheezels was much more than “progressive/left”…………….
……..he was a raging Communist.
Read what he actually said.
no real argument from me thuce but please don’t tell me you’re waving ‘communism’ about as some kind of soft pap prog ante-raising in Crikey’s eternal ‘leftiest lefty’ poker hand?!
‘inverted commas’, dear boy. the ‘progressive/left’ of which one spake with such mildly-bored cordiality has far more in common with the equally counterfeit imposters of folau’s ersatz-idealist gang than either jc OR leon. god be buggered.
“some kind of soft pap prog ante-raising in Crikey’s eternal ‘leftiest lefty’ poker hand?!” What does that even mean?
Lots of word salay. What exactly are you trying to say?
Pretty sure nobody gives a crap whether you believe in “God” – that’s totally your business.
But if you identify as religious, that tends to carry a whole lot of baggage that a lot of disagree whether you have a right to drag around.
BTW, enough of your moronic ‘soft pap’ diss already.
Pretty sure nobody gives a crap whether you believe in “God” – that’s totally your business.
But if you identify as religious, that tends to carry a whole lot of baggage that a lot of disagree whether you have a right to drag around.
BTW, enough of your pathetic ‘soft pap’ diss already.
Chortle. Erm…suh-lightly revealing admission to make on a secular ethics article/thread nominally about finding ‘inclusive, pluralist, non-demonising’ free speech/conversational ground between the Faithful and the secular, Kimmo. As for my specific God-baggage? You may be right. And maybe Crikey will let you have an actual look, so you can think about whether or not you are.
As for the ‘soft pap’ tag? ‘Kimmo’, I’ll choose whatever pronouns/labels for you I please. Until/unless you have the progressive-political seriousness, substance and self-respect to have this public conversation using your real name. In which case I’ll immediately extend you well-deserved respect by using it. With unfailing care, courtesy and genuine curiosity about what you truly think.
In the meantime…what are you going to do about it, you anonymous soft pap prog tyre-kicker? Get me sacked, like Folau? Take me to the AHRC? Call the cops and get me arrested? If the last, please let me know, so I can pack an overnight bag. You all know my phone number by now. Chrs.
So Crikey has now deleted my ‘Awaiting Moderation’ contribution for the second time, Kimmo, so it seems you’re all free to get on with your ‘pluralist’ debate unpestered by ‘new ideas’ on the Folau/free speech/Faith issues after all. It’s a pity, because I think it was a good and potentially converation-expanding contribution, and in keeping with the article’s explicit intent.
But fair enough. LC’s/Crikey’s space, and one can only abase oneself so far. Chrs all.
When will subscribers realise that this site is NOT about free thought or debate?
Unless the lion is towed (out of the slop) the cloaca inward spiraling will continue.
So much for any hope that the new editor was not another example of the Who song.
Seems to be infinite how many times can people revel in being fooled, again and again and again…
I’ve been Modded plenty of times, as often as not for very excellent reasons. Editing is all subjective and it’s not my space anyway (well, at a stretch it’s 1/60,000th my space…I colonise my money’s worth and then some! :-). No-one’s ‘entitled’ to be platformed by anyone else, I’ve been involved in running too many ‘free speech/public debate’ websites myself to get sucked into that black hole of narcissistic victimhood. And even when Crikey retrospectively disappears old thread posts, as it does from rare time to time, one defaults to cock-up/resource limitations rather than epistemic conspiracy.
This one though has me glum. Like Kimmo’s truly witless comment above it’s just such a manifestly self-contradictory own goal. It…makes a mockery of LC/Szubanski’s (I presume) good faith intent, by default it leaves me ridiculous and unfairly verballed (I’ll live), and worst, it misses an opportunity to get a genuinely interesting, pluralist convo going.
I can’t see the upside for Crikey. It was a pretty useful contribution, I thought. Obviously I would say that, but I would have especially liked to see what the likes of Thuce, Kimmo and the other harsh critics of religion/God/Faith made of it. Anyway, it’s hardly sheep stations.
Your characterization of your comment as a “Sermon” (As per your comment below) probably explains why it failed to pass the Mod examination……………..
……..and also provides ample justification for my verdict on a later comment as “Patronizing twaddle”.
The very term “Sermon” implies the belief that the author has some “Superior Knowledge” that requires dissemination to the “Unenlightened”.
Does it not occur to you that your “Superior Knowledge” consequent on your “Faith” in something that simply cannot be proved is simply an extension of the delusion?
There is a perfectly useful word for people who believe things which cannot be proved……………………….
Gullible.
all this acute literary, intellectual and moral analysis….sight unseen. why, it’s shorely a miracle, thuce! one might even say a…matter of Faith.
jackrobertson@ozemail.com.au. will cheerfully send it to you. then by all means shred away! chrs.
I’ll stop reading your posts now. Your endless meaningless verbage is giving me a headache. go and chat to your chosen god
Babies not not born religious. People become religious because they are indoctrinated as young children by their parents and the lies told by the church. They always have a choice to use their reason and question the dogma of their chosen religion. That’s exactly what I did.
Indeed. The false equivalency from the Right is ridiculous. LGBTQIA groups have never advocated people have the right to murder Christians following a nonviolent sexual advance and have it downgraded to murder. Trans groups are not advocating the extermination of cis people. Gay bakers have never demanded a right to refuse to serve Christians.
*downgraded to manslaughter
If governments continue to carve out protections for religious speech and action, then it promotes inequities throughout our social and judicial spaces
Christ was a good bloke and should be liatened to. Trouble is the spivs down the ages have carefully curated the message to produce the self serving rotten mess called Christianity we see today. Christ has been hijacked by spivs. They have no right to claim they speak for him.
He’d probably speak highly of you – IF he’d existed.
I think the scribe being quotes or paraphrased by Mr Folau was Paul. Well known as a problematic influencer.
Correct. Paul was dodgy.
And if Christ knew me he would probably not speak highly of me.
My dim recollection was that Mr Folau endorsed (retweeted?) a passage from the New Testament which suggested some kind of unpleasantness for a selection of transgressors. The list notably did not include murderers.
I agree we should not sink to his level when responding to self-sanctifying and essentially threatening retweets from people who believe themselves to be celebs. But all free speech requires free reply.
But the High Court reiterated that in Australia, our right to free speech, is implied only, therefore has no legal protections. In short, there is no legal or constitutional right to free speech at all. High time for a revamp of the constitution and the addition of a Bill of Rights.
Be careful what you wish for…………………..
Would you really want to replicate the American nightmare, where every man and his dog has the “God-given Right” to do what they want, say what they want…………..
…….and kill as many schoolkids as they can.
You’re conflating the first and second amendments
I’m sure the dead schoolkids couldn’t give a rat’s arse………….
Fat lot of good either their Constitution or Bill of Rights did them.
Only for want of “schools with a single locked door and good guys with guns“, according to those Congress critters who would arm teachers.
Not a direct quote, he paraphrased what was, until 5mins. ago, a fairly common religious belief –
“Warning – Drunks, Homosexuals, Adulterers, Liars, Fornicators, Thieves, Atheists, Idolaters. HELL AWAITS YOU. REPENT! ONLY JESUS SAVES”
Given the direction of interest rates atm, Jesus is either astute or lucky if he can save.
Dunno about that, 5% for fixed term ain’t bad.
I don’t think he paraphrased it himself, I think he lifted it off some US religious website.
of course not and the only group that was condemned for mere existence was homosexuals…
yep spot on and I think there’s a fundamental and morally definitive reason for that, ps. those condemned were of course the only group who are not categorical sinners. but few people these days, Faithful or secular alike, really want to have an honest convo about those other seven actual sins. (or cruddy behaviours, to the godless among you.) apparently. certainly not professional elite athletes, their multimillion dollar corporate sponsors, the sporting press, the lgbtqai+ community and reactionary religious bigotry, anyway.
much safer for both sides of the IF divide to have yet another pointless and unwinnable argument over an entirely untestable premise, privileged!