The Israel Folau saga just keeps rolling on: on the very day that Folau’s claim against his former employers was lodged with Australia’s Federal Court, it was revealed that his cousin, Josiah Folau, has also lost his job over his religious views. Just to thicken the plot, Josiah was sacked by none other than the Catholic church.
Starting with cousin Israel’s case, Folau’s legal claim makes clear that he is not backing down an inch. He not only wants an apology from Rugby Australia but financial compensation and the right to play for Australia again.
The eight-page claim — lodged with the Federal Circuit Court in Melbourne yesterday by the rugby star’s new legal team — argues he was unlawfully dismissed under a key part of the Fair Work Act that disallows sackings because of a person’s religion…
Folau’s new legal team of solicitors MacPherson Kelley and barrister Stuart Wood QC argue in the claim that there was “nothing unlawful about his conduct” and it “certainly did not justify Mr Folau losing his career and livelihood”…Folau’s lawyers say he maintained social media accounts “not for any purpose connected to his employment” as a rugby player, but primarily for the purpose of lawfully communicating religious content.
“He did this because of his religious faith, which goes to the very essence of his personhood,” the Folau claim says.
Folau’s case is an acid test of whether Australia really is fair dinkum about religious freedom and workers’ rights, or whether there is one law for some and another for others.
The legal claim against Rugby Australia and the NSW Waratahs is based on section 772 of the Fair Work Act of 2009, which says an employer must not terminate a person’s employment for reasons including: “race, colour, sexual preference, age, physical or mental disability, marital status, family or carer’s responsibilities, pregnancy, religion, political opinion, national extraction or social origin”.
The Australian
Meanwhile, cousin Josiah is stirring the pot with the Micks.
Josiah Folau lost his job as a tutor and boarding house supervisor at St Gregory’s College in southwest Sydney after making inflammatory comments in which he called the Catholic mass “a paganistic ritual rooted in heresy, evil and devil worship”…Josiah Folau, a former school captain at St Gregory’s who made the state’s top 10 in religious studies in 2016, was told more than a week ago he was no longer wanted for his part-time job at the school…
Besides recent Instagrams in which he spoke out against the Catholic Church, Josiah Folau was reported by Nine media and news.com.au as telling the mother of a young rugby player that the church was “false and filled with lies”.
He wrote to the mother after she attended a bible studies meeting at the home of church founder Eni Folau. Quoting from his uncle’s sermons, Josiah Folau said only his church had “the truth”. He also dismissed women preachers, saying that to accept them meant “Satan’s got you”.
He said homosexuality was a sin “worthy of death”.
I guess Izzy’s posts are looking pretty tame now, huh?
George Williams, professor of law at the University of NSW, said the second Folau termination was more complicated than the first because it centred on the way the Catholic Church protected its religious freedom by “determining who they employ”.
theaustralian.com.au/nation/israel-folaus-cousin-josiah-leaves-catholic-school-job-after-airing-religious-beliefs
Should the church be forced to retain an employee who so openly defies its teaching and criticises its policies? There’s obviously a good argument for saying no, but – imagine if, instead, Josiah was an openly gay activist who pranced in rainbow g-strings in a “Pride” parade and campaigned for gay marriage. How many of the people smugly defending the sacking of he and his cousin Israel would then be “outraged”?
Josiah’s views seem far more extreme than Israel’s, but so what? Plenty of extremists from other religions still get to keep their seat at the table of “polite society”. Saying homosexuality is “worthy of death” is also, without doubt, a provocative statement – yet it still falls far short of the litmus test of incitement: “reasonably likely, in all the circumstances, to incite violence against the other person or group of people”.
Nonetheless, his views are without doubt offensive to many people, Catholics not least. Yet it’s precisely such offensive views that form the coal face of free speech. Either you defend the free speech of views you despise, or you don’t believe in free speech at all.