It seems that “God’s Will” in deciding whether star former rugby player Israel Folau should still be able to play has a longer run time that the extended Lord of the Rings trilogy.
After he posted that homosexuals will “burn in Hell” unless they repent for their sins on his social media back in April, a panel of three unanimously decided that his contract should be torn up for committing a High Level Breach – and we though that would be it.
But he’s back.
And he’s suing Rugby Australia for up to $10 million claiming that he was sacked because of his religious beliefs (something which warrants unfair dismissal in Australia). Now you can argue as much as you want if he was sacked on his religious beliefs or not, but what really gets me is that during this whole ordeal Folau has never once seemed to realise that he may not actually be the victim here.
He is acting like all this stuff happening to him now – the loss of sponsorship, the loss of job, with “witch hunt” in the media – is other people picking on him, and that everyone is unfairly turning on him. But just because it seems everyone is turning on you doesn’t make you a victim.
At some point you would think the scales would flip and Izzy will actually have some divine epiphany.
But the fact that he is still marching on to try and (indirectly) bankrupt Rugby Australia shows me that maybe this will never happen.
Folau is feeling like the Australian public and sporting world is against him. Which is because… We are.
We had a plebiscite not that long ago which showed overwhelming public support for our LGBTI community, so the days of preaching some bigoted nonsense from a 3000-year-old book and expecting people to agree with you are gone.
That is why if Folau is not willing to accept the realty that he’s wrong and in a world where his supporters are greatly outnumbered, perhaps he should move to Utah. A state in American where he will have no shortage of fellow Mormons, and he’ll be approximately 14,000km from us.