Man I was all set to sit back, relax and enjoy the Israel Folau free speech thing after a few days thinking about environmental catastrophe.
This was a stoush that had everything you want from a culture pseudo war: unimportant speech utterance of an archaic type, overreaction, right-wing pile on, ridiculous cultural left counter-reaction, happy-clappy escalation. The works. Folau’s fire ‘n’ brimstone pronouncement appears to have been barely noticed when he made it. Rugby Australia made sure it would by censuring him. He gave himself the appearance of being a little opportunistic with a legal funds appeal, which GoFundMe magnified by cancelling, and here we are.
The best part of all of this? Whatever superficial satisfactions the right got from it, there was no way they could win it. Should their campaign to reinstate Folau succeed in the legal realm, they would/will have established that freely signed employment contracts can be judged onerous if they restrict speech and expression rights — knocking Anzac Day, for example? Were the challenge to fail, it would establish that generally progressive values could be enforced in various social arenas.
Win/win so far as I could see.
The jam the right was in over Folau was of their own making. Convinced by their own Cold War nostalgia propaganda that the big bad state was the enemy, they hadn’t noticed that their victory in matters economic ensured that our lives were increasingly dominated by all encompassing corporations, many of whom imposed restrictions on outside-of-work activities as part of employment contracts.
This was added to by a couple of articles from the cultural left, which was so desperate to cover the inconvenient fact that race-LGBTIQ solidarity had broken down that it treated Folau as part-child, his actions determined by his colonial Christian-Pacific heritage.
The day after that was expressed, Folau launched his GoFundMe, making everyone look silly. No one really cared much. The Australian was really having a bit of trouble turning it into a wider issue, until Q&A — which is possibly the only TV show in the world to have Stockholm syndrome — bigged it up. When the right attacked GoFundMe for managing its own brand responsibly, I was over the moon.
But I knew it would be too good to last, once one got acquainted with the case. It turned out that Folau did not suddenly start speaking in tongues, but had made his remarks after Rugby Australia, as an organisation, had thrown its support behind the marriage plebiscite yes vote. That detail — missing from most reports of the matter — surely changes things somewhat. Rugby Australia has taken a political position on behalf of its players, and Folau is surely entitled to assert his dissident opinion in relation to such. Possibly, had Rugby Australia a neutral stance, he might not have felt the need to do such at all.
So damn it, there goes the shits and giggles. There’s an actual issue here. The soft totalitarian — very soft but nevertheless — fashion whereby a sports peak body feels the need to have an official position on sexuality, or to be an agent for anti-racism (AFL) is one of the most bizarre phenomena of our time.
Taking part in the scourge of the age — institutions bombarding us with messages as part of behavioural programming — such strategies call out the behaviour they claim to oppose, by giving it the appearance of resistance. Folau’s actions are — though very different in content — similar in form to US footballers “taking the knee” during the national anthem (also happening here). It is a refusal to be spoken for, simply because an organisation has bought your talents for a few years.
That’s especially so when the talent is sporting — that is, embodied — and the body is black. Sports stardom has been a devil’s bargain through the twentieth century, offering black people a rare chance at wealth and celebrity, if they will fit into the animal and gladiatorial metaphors that sports summons. That presumption was behind the torrent of racism directed at Adam Goodes, but such racism was given a frisson of anti-authoritarian resistance by the AFL’s anti-racism proselytising.
There’s a simple way to get rid of a lot of this: make institutions as neutral as possible. Rugby Australia no more needed a same-sex marriage plebiscite policy than Beaumaris Golf Club needs a Middle East peace plan.
We have created a society which combines people born into a high-tech secular elite with rural traditionalists and recent arrivals from unmodernised religious cultures. The only possible public ethic for this social form is pluralism in which some restraints on speech might be enforced in the interests of neutral public space — but in which the enforcement of authorised values (other than pluralism itself) are anathema.
There will still be time to enjoy the Folau-RA confrontation, but dammit, the issue turned out to be important after all. Meantime, let’s see what else non-white sports people object to in the future (Anzac kitsch? The anthem?) should Folau’s case establish that a player’s citizenship can’t be traded away for a few bucks.
Damn straight, Rundle. Am glad the climate could wait for a minute.
Dare you to tweet it though!
“The soft totalitarian — very soft but nevertheless — fashion whereby a sports peak body feels the need to have an official position on sexuality, or to be an agent for anti-racism (AFL) is one of the most bizarre phenomena of our time.”
Well said Guy Rundle.
Not only that, but the ANZ Bank has censured Folau’s wife (who is a netball player) for promoting his fundraising page. Priceless isn’t it? Arguably a criminal organization which steals from its customers on a vast scale is ‘virtue signalling’ as a virtual corporate criminal!!
Corporations are independent legal entities but they are not ‘natural persons’. I would have thought that only ‘natural persons’ have free speech. That a ‘non-natural person’ cannot speak at all. It can only function within the bounds of the Corporations Law.
The opinions on social and ‘moral’ issues issued in the name of a Corporation are therefore the opinions of ‘natural persons’ who are responsible officers of same.
So when ANZ or Qantas support some ‘progressive’ social cause, it is the CEO or Board Members’ personal opinions we are seeing on show.
When gay CEO Alan Joyce threw Qantas support behind the marriage equality campaign, who was being represented by Qantas? Surely a corporate with thousands of employees would likely have about the same proportion of opponents of same sex marriage as the plebiscite produced – 38%. Do those 38% of Qantas employees have the right to express their opposing view in public and keep their jobs? What does Qantas’s employee contract say – ‘you must never disagree with the opinions of our gay CEO in public or you are in breach of the company’s policies and are guilty of misconduct?’
And while we are talking of sport – the female taxpayer funded soccer team – Matildas which were cheered from the rafters by the ABC and sundry others when they beat Jamaica (the lowest ranked team in the world cup) have suddenly become unmentionable on the ABC and elsewhere after losing to Norway 4-1 in a penalty shoot out.
It was reported in the Murdoch press that the stink over the shock sacking of their long time male coach 5 months ago had a more sinister undercurrent. Apart from an amazing unqualified apology to said coach from administrators; the press reported that a coven of lesbians operated within the team, hitting on new members and creating a diabolically toxic workplace.
So what would you rather have – Folau free speeching old testament fire and brimstone after dark; or a gay coven hitting on you in the dressing sheds??
‘So what would you rather have – Folau free speeching old testament fire and brimstone after dark; or a gay coven hitting on you in the dressing sheds??’
Struth, please is there a third option?
Agree with all Stowaway’s sentiments. The ABC definitely overdid the Matilda reporting/gush. Am looking forward to hearing Mr Folau’s thoughts on the Murdoch story….
Is Alan Jones is upset about Israel’s views on the groups who are going to end up in hell?
Alans a Queen not a homosexual.. apparently..
“coven of lesbians operated”
Well, even if your rant had some basis in fact you just destroyed it with that little turn of a comment. Lesbian witches infest Oz soccer team, brilliant. What ‘press’ do you ‘read’, Hustler?
Weekend Australian a couple of weeks ago. If the report were false, I would expect that the organs of women’s soccer would have been suing the a**se off the Murdoch paper by now.
What if the slipper were on the other foot? Imagine a gay male ‘group’ within a representative Rugby team hitting on the new Polynesian boys in the team?
All hell would break loose.
(Or would the ABC self-censor the story through its daisy chain of woke ‘journalists’?)
Weekend Australian? You’ve gone into bat for one of their assertions!
And what about the business franchises masquerading as religious entities, tax free to boot!
I know your a bunch of Victorians but the AFL, they have enough problems with Racist/Fascist crowds & Goode’s mess, but the NRL has problems but is praised for it handling of Racial & Gay matters,any Gay AFL players come out yet.
But for some reason the Victorian writers of this paper never mention it, there are more Aboriginal/Pacific islander/ Maori players in the NRL so perhaps that why,I find it passing strange how NRL gets ignored by Crikey
Unless to denigrate it
I dislike the idea of social media becoming “the workplace” and I dislike the idea of a “workplace contract” being able to put limitations on a persons right to advocate for their beliefs. Whatever those beliefs happen to be.
Because the same power used (by an employer) to quash Folau’s homophobia will be used later to quash other views wherever they disagree with the employers views.
So the power is the problem, not how they’ve used it in this particular case.
Also on activism in sport. In most cases the sportspeople were activists before the establishment joined the progressive causes. So anything which might curtail activism in sport will probably wind up being an own-goal.
Quite right Fletch.
don’t sign it then..
Potential Coles Employee: I don’t like this ‘zero hours’ clause in the contract
Coles: don’t sign it then
PCE: but you and Woolies are the only jobs going, and they’ve got the same contract
Coles: sign it then
@Jaybuoy Imagine someone telling you to sign an employment agreement or they’ll burn your house down.
Now imagine an economic system where employers coerce labour into working for shit conditions because they have mortgages, bills and food to buy.
There’s coercive forces at work when people decide to sell their hours of their life for subsistence… ignore those forces at your peril.
fletch, yeah! you don’t know what your talking about..
There are many jobs where you have to sign a contract around how you will comport yourself in public, down to the dress code or uniform, these have been around forever..
The reason is that if your on a flight or a ship, or work in a hotel going o/s & your a crew member, you have to be very careful, no fraternization, no political or religious discussion or views etc as these as you can tell cause problems, this was well before social media seems to get so many people into trouble..
So I’m sorry you have to realise that Folau has been given many opportunities to escape from the debacle that WAS & IS of his own making, he didn’t have to sign the 5 million dollar contract if he felt so strongly..
The RA have tried to work it out with him, he seems to think that he’s more of preacher than a Rugby player, this may work in a place where Christianity has a strong moral foundations in a relatively small community say in the Pacific Islands, or in the Bible belt in the US, for example I would suggest Australia has changed a great deal & has become thankfully more inclusive than many of these cultures have toward LGBTIQ people which you never hear about..
In Thailand there’s a lot of LGBTIQ people & it’s a tough gig for them to survive..
In my early career having worked with so many gay men, they are once they learn to trust you the most wonderful people..
The thing that I find so distressing is that people seem to think that Folau’s discrimination is acceptable, to pay money for something that he shouldn’t be, because he has privilege he gets paid way too much money to chase a leather ball around..
This and your article last year about Folau are the most internally ethically consistent reports on the controversy I’ve encountered. Hopefully it all results in weakened employment contracts, regarding speech.
Agreed. It does n’t get better. Great piece from Rundle.