A young person privately expresses views that are incompatible with those of their employer.
Someone notifies a national newspaper of these views.
The national newspaper publishes the correspondence.
The young person is fired and will likely struggle to find future employment in a similar field as a consequence.
A columnist writes a follow-up sarcastic opinion piece on the newly-unemployed person.
The public interest to justify publication; his brother cousin is famous.
No, seriously.
Let’s put it another way:
A private citizen had their private religious views made front page news and the newspaper contacted his employer for comment, presumably with the expectation the employer would act upon the information.
That’s the world in which we find ourselves in 2019. If you have impure thoughts you will be cancelled and, presumably pour encourager les autres, your family will be similarly targeted.
Bill’s Opinion
As we’ve previously stated, it is now clear that the Israel Folau case is the left’s chosen battleground for the culture war this year.
That his brother cousin, Josiah, has been targeted in this way further supports this hypothesis. It’s a tactic from the Soviets – not only do we want you to be punished publicly, but your family will be in our sights too.
That there seems to be little shock or surprise from the commentariat is also deeply worrying.
Peter Fitzsimons, for example, clearly didn’t think for one moment of what the consequences of this approach might be for his children, Billi, Louis and Jake. With two famous parents, this new standard makes them fair targets for analysis and scrutiny for thought crimes.
We will not enjoy where the road takes us if our private thoughts at the age of 23 are now legitimate front page material to serve one side or the other in a culture war.
UPDATE: Thanks to those who pointed out my reading comprehension skills are dusty and that Josiah is, in fact, Israel’s cousin, not brother. Of course, that’s even worse, isn’t it? What next, targeting the religious beliefs of their neighbours?
When it comes to jobs, the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.
The best he can hope for now is a half decent reference.
His brother was tweeting his views to the world. Josiah is still a private individual, just like your and my kids.
The implications of this targeting are not being spoken about in public.
Maybe because he wasn’t targeted.
Plus this young disciple wold have to be feeling a bit better about himself now that Satan has let him go and he is free from his grasp, it must have been such a conflict with his conscience being stuck in that Roman Catholic hell hole.
I feel he is in a better place now.
If it were the Soviets they would have tortured all the priests and dynamited the Chapel.
“Maybe because he wasn’t targeted”.
I’m genuinely curious as to why you would think that.
He is merely a servant of God and is fully entitled to target the Roman Catholic with his wrath as he sees fit, our cuzzy boy remains free to preach another hateful sermon today, its not as if he as been banned from preaching or anything.
Similarly the concerned Christian parent was entitled to call the ACL leader a liar, just as the press are free to report on any aspect that they think will sell papers.
I’m not saying anyone has broken the law, I’m asking why you believe Josiah wasn’t targeted by Pirate Pete and the SMH?
There are many people in the country with strange religious beliefs, I don’t see full page exposés on them.
Simple, he was newsworthy in both the SMH’s and your opinion. A lady met with the ACL to express her concerns that they were representing something that they may have not have realized that they were. As part of her concern she relayed statements of what an overzealous preacher that is closely related to a person that is a major front page story had said to her, plus both of them preach at the same birthing pool. A paper takes up the story, they publish her account and some footage of the disciple preaching, the customers are interested and they got clicks and it obviously piqued your interest as well.
It happens all the time and yes there is always a first time for it as well.
I certainly don’t see cuzzy as being targeted by anyone as being something other than a preacher with views, which the evidence supports, nobody is denying what the disciples are preaching or what they stand for, its just something that the punters lap up. Its not like they made it all up, set up some kind of engineered polarization or called him a complete tool, or an anti-Semite, is it?
And I like her reckon that that ACL dude is a wrong un as well.
“And the truth, whenever it is spoken, will yield fruit. Silence is not an option.”
“… he was newsworthy in both the SMH’s and your opinion”.
No.
I didn’t want to know about someone’s brother’s religious views.
I also didn’t want to learn about what the brother says on Sundays at church. I don’t follow his social media accounts either, for the same reason.
Your answer contradicts itself within two paragraphs; he was targeted because of his brother but he wasn’t targeted.
“Newsworthy” is a poor defence and one leaned on by editors who are looking to justify salacious gossip about sex scandals.
Whether someone’s brother believes in a strange sky fairy is not news. I hope your sons don’t have a famous relative or friend during their young adult years when they are at risk of being foolish, otherwise they will be fair game for front page splashes, right?
There you go again with your invented targets, and yes despite what you say you do love this story and every bit of tiny gossip about it, otherwise you wouldn’t feed it as much as you do. You could always vote with your feet and not read or complain about the SMH, have you considered that?
The real story in this particular little side show, which was republished from a Christian website and once you can get past your nanny state there ought to be laws against this outrage, was about the ladies account of the dishonesty of Martin Ilyes. That is the takeaway here, not cuzzy lying down with dogs.
If my son did what cuzzy did and lost his job then I would ask him what he had learned from the experience. Which is the only correct response for cuzzy here, if he is to amount to anything in life.
Ok Bardon.
You’re not addressing my question and I’m not in the mood to play “win on the Internet” with you today. Enjoy your Sunday.
Fair enough. The Lions are kicking off shortly and then let’s see if the SHS Ambassador pulls another rabbit out of the hat this evening.
Only just noticed, but Pete Fitzsimons wearing a bandanna in his photograph is hilarious. The guy obviously feels it makes him look like a rebel/pirate: it makes him look an ageing fool. Does he actually think that people will take him seriously?
It’s his “thing”.
The story is, his kids bought it for him on a family holiday to Cuba. I have a memory of there being some kind of Johnny Cash, “man in black” story about him wearing it until Australia is a republic, but that might be false memory.
But anyway, a silly affectation nonetheless.
Also, I hesitate to chuck accusations of -isms around at people, as I’m not a mind-reader, but there does seem to be a skin-hue common factor with the targets of Mr Wilkinson’s ire recently. I’m sure it’s only a coincidence.
Don’t fixate on the private correspondence bit. It’s most unlikely that The Outlaw Josey Folau never aired his views in public, and never communicated them to anyone else in writing. At a rough estimate I would say that there are at least thirty hearsay witnesses (the size of his little religious community). The man appears to be something between a nutcase and a dickhead and for his overweening arrogance richly deserves what was probably a long time coming to him.
Hard cases make bad law. In the same way that pro-abortionists argue that nobody would stop the termination of a pregnancy if the sonar revealed that the child had three heads, scales and a forked tail, dear old Socrates loved to extract general principles from cases on the margin. I wouldn’t waste a second protecting the free speech rights of, for example, a paedophile preaching on his chosen topic. Josh needs to be kept as far away from impressionable children as possible.
Strange, I thought I’d replied to this earlier but it would seem it didn’t save.
Anyway, my point was, if this is the new standard I look forward to it being equally applied to random citizens at the Lakemba mosque, Bondi synagogue and all other denominations of major religions.
@MvR
Yes he is definitely a bit of a strange one and not to be trusted, particularly with the young and impressionable.
I think that Izzys free lawyers slush fund, whilst being diligently hoovered up at a very fast and large flow rate by the best suits that money can buy. will probably outlast his religious gene pool at the rate that they are going at now. Martin Ilyes will no doubt be praying like hell that the Falou religious dog dies, before he too gets up with fleas.
I wouldn’t put it past the Tongan mafia for our cuzzy brother to not sign on the dole and join Izzy’s defense team as the photocopy clerk or something similar, perfectly legal as well.
Ocker Bill could benefit from paying closer attention to the … er… “news”.. article he linked to.
The Outlaw Josey Folau, maligned by Pirate “my kids are off limits” Pete, is Izzy Folau’s …. cousin.
… this sorta really opens up the market.
Jesus (excuse the blaspheming), perhaps I shouldn’t blog while drunk….
There again, there’d be even less content for you.
I take a weekend off from the internet and online news and look what happens! The left have tried to take down Israel and have witnessed the backlash from the silent majority re: the donations to his fighting fund, so the logical answer for them is to try and discredit his entire family and paint them as religious nutjobs. Of course if anyone were to say that people who believed that a man can be a women just because he puts on a dress and “feels” that he is a woman were extremists they would of course be open to a full on attack by all the woke left.
It is outrageous that Israel’s cousin has been dragged into this but as you mentioned Billy the left is making a stand on this issue (the funny thing is what the cousin is alleged to have said is pretty much what the Protestant church has thought about the Catholic church for the last 500 years).
“…..pretty much what the Protestant church has thought about the Catholic church for the last 500 years”.
Yes, hold the front page; Christian denominations don’t completely agree on doctrine. The SMH are going to be shocked, shocked I tell ya, when they learn about the schism of 1054…..
It’s a culture war, pure and simple.
I find it very amusing how suddenly lefty “journalists” are authorities on the Christian faith and are arbiters of what constitutes “radical Christian doctrine”. If only they had spoken up sooner we could have been saved from centuries of theological argument!
Yes, it’s going to be illuminating to read Guy Rundle or Peter Fitzsimons on consubstantiation versus transubstantiation or, better still, the Prophet’s journey on the Buraq…..
We all know that neither would touch anything to do with the Prophet with a barge pole, as for the question on Holy Communion, I am not a believer of either argument but I am dying to find out Peter Fitzsimon’s opinion on this subject.
“I am dying to find out Peter Fitzsimon’s opinion on this subject”.
Baby Jesus cries when you tell fibs, you know….
We are all sinners…….
Bardon isn’t; he’s like Pope Pious the 9th, infallible.
“Bardon isn’t; he’s like Pope Pious the 9th, infallible.”
You smell that? Do you smell that?… Napalm, son. Smelled like… victory.
Go on with you; you went Godwin. By definition, that’s a loss.
There are many similarities in the case of Izzzy and his unemployed cuzzy brother, as follows:
1 – they are both shining examples that go to show that their natural born right to freely exercise their religion is very much alive and well in Australia;
2 – their constitutional rights in this regard are well enshrined, in place and not being called into question by anyone;
3 – that there is absolutely no need for any further legislation with respect to religious discrimination, which is a falsehood;
4 – that all religious discrimination legislation should be revoked, not increased;
5 – that Australians in the collective and as individuals hold up and observe individual liberties and the right of freedom to exercise their religion but some individuals and not the collective do have a problem with hypocrites; and
6 – mum and dad were right when they said “do not bite the hand that feeds you”.
I’m sorry, but you’re doing that autistic thing again – the original blog post was on the fact that, apart from sharing no more than 25% of the DNA of a famous person, Josiah is a regular citizen who didn’t ask and doesn’t deserve being targeted by national media.
You can choose not to address this and focus on the illogic and hypocrisy of people with religious views (something most mature atheists grew out of long ago), but you’ll get no further response from me if you do.
“Josiah is a regular citizen who didn’t ask and doesn’t deserve being targeted by national media.”
Except that he wasn’t targeted. Unfortunately the nature of journalism is that in the process of investigating any given subject, some members of the public may object to the nature of an investigation, they feel confronted or exposed by the who’s and the what’s, expressed from another viewpoint and object to the eventual findings being published in the media. Fortunately there is a process for dealing with this*.
The initial story was about a Christians (citizen) direct concern that the leader (citizen) of the Australian Christian Lobby group that is controlling the free legal funding of Izzy’s (citizen) allegation that his termination was unlawful because it discriminated against his right to practice his Christian faith, was not professionally aware of the views that Falou’s church held, which, in her opinion were most unchristian like.
Whether Josiah (citizen) deserved his preaching or statement on the subject to be published in the media or not, or, if as you curiously insist that he was somehow “targeted” by them, is clearly a matter of press freedom and how far it should be allowed to go.
The article was about the churches religious views, cuzzy brother was a secondary player at this point and was directly and voluntarily quoted in his capacity as a church preacher on his churches outspoken views on Roman Catholicism and some of his churches other more controversial preachings.
What if he were a yoga teacher (non-citizen), would he have deserved their wrath then?
*You are though entitled “to get the shit off your liver” and hold a personal conviction on the rightful content of press articles or otherwise and complain about what they should and should not contain. See the Australian Press Councils procedure for making a secondary complaint.
“Secondary complaints”
Where a complainant is not personally identified or directly affected by the published material, the complaint may be considered as a “secondary complaint” and some different procedures may apply (see Handling of Complaints).
Download a copy of the fact sheet Secondary Complaints.
https://www.presscouncil.org.au/uploads/52321/ufiles/Fact_Sheet_Secondary_Complaints_Final_30-06-15.pdf
In 1933 freedom of the press was suppressed in Nazi Germany by the Reichstag Fire Decree of President Paul von Hindenburg, just as Adolf Hitler was coming to power. Hitler largely suppressed freedom of the press through Joseph Goebbels’ Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda.[21] The Ministry acted as a central control point for all media, issuing orders as to what stories could be run and what stories would be suppressed.