‘Folau is wrong’: NSW church stands in solidarity with LGBTIQ+ community

‘Folau is wrong’: NSW church stands in solidarity with LGBTIQ+ community
Image: Image: Twitter / Father Rod Bower.

The Anglican Parish of Gosford in NSW has updated its letter board to condemn Israel Folau and show support for LGBTIQ+ Australians.

Earlier this week, a video surfaced in which Folau spoke out against the LGBTIQ+ community during a church sermon in Sydney.

In his speech, Folau recalled a politician at a recent Christian function speaking about what “parliament is trying to instil into the government going forward”.

“A lot of the points are, he’s talking about how the work of the sin, homosexuality, is in disguise to try and take over within this world,” Folau said.

“You see a lot of things in today’s news and everything. They’re allowing young kids in primary school to be able to have the permission to change their gender if they want by taking away the permission of their parents.

“Now they’re trying to take control as a government to make that decision for kids that are basically 16-years-old or younger. They don’t even know what they’re doing.

“This is what the devil’s trying to do to instil into this government, into this world, into this society and it’s slowly happening.”

In response, long-time ally Father Rod Bower took to Twitter to vent his frustrations.

“Israel Folau is the price we pay for free speech,” he wrote.

“He has the right to say it and I have a responsibility to oppose what he says.”

Bower also shared a photo of his church’s letter board, which currently states: “LGBT friends, Folau is wrong. Don’t listen to him.”

This isn’t the first time Bower or the Anglican Parish of Gosford have gotten creative when trying to send an important message.

In 2016, the Central Coast church put up the message “LGBTIQ people please forgive us” on its famous sign and posted a photo to Facebook.

Father Rod Bower was responsible for the sign and said he was no stranger to LGBTI issues.

“The issue of human sexuality is one of the major issues in the Anglican community,” he told the Star Observer at the time.

“I think it would be fair to say this issue has the potential to cause a schism in the Anglican community.

“The ongoing debate we’re having is damaging to gay and lesbian people.”

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6 responses to “‘Folau is wrong’: NSW church stands in solidarity with LGBTIQ+ community”

  1. The law is the only thing that matters and it is the High Court that will decide whether Folau breached his contract or not

  2. to quote this fool.. “You see a lot of things in today’s news and everything. They’re allowing young kids in primary school to be able to have the permission to change their gender if they want by taking away the permission of their parents.

    So primary school children are now able to change their gender by sheer will? Amazing. Welcome to the X-men. In my day, you couldn’t even change your gender even if your parents gave you permission.

    I await the aliens and mankind to live in peace and harmony…. in this amazing new world of imagination of this fool..

  3. I tick the atheist box these days (and highly recommend Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion if you haven’t read it) but I spent 12 years at Anglican school and my teenage years voluntarily attending Anglican church on Sundays.

    The message on the billboard in this article is effectively what I was taught during my experience of religion. Nothing Folau says resembles much of my experience, on the other hand.

    My recollection is that Folau is behaving like a Pharisee, who Jesus had a lot to say about in the gospels. By claiming to know God’s will Folau is also blaspheming. By claiming that gender is binary he is baring false witness (I think that was the phrase) to the literally thousands of scientifically verified intersex births around the world each year, or indeed the observation of intersex situations throughout nature. Nature (or God if that’s what you prefer to call it) is clearly sending the message that gender is anything but binary.

    The progressive Anglican way of looking at the world is that God is clearly very complex and beyond direct understanding, we should all do our best to work out what God wants from us in our lives and try to be socially constructive and loving. God obviously created lots of folks of various religions and creeds for a reason, like Father Bower in the article implies the important thing is that they should be tolerated but also challenged, and we should be challenged by them too.

    Folau’s brand of religion is unfortunately a low-intelligence, simplistic and divisive brand of Protestantism popularised in America and exported to uneducated folks in developing countries. I think it’s exploitative and racist of them to do that, I think Folau’s community have effectively volunteered to be colonised by these scumbags, but that’s a different issue for another day.

    • Dave, it’s irrelevant whether you think Folau’s posts are of low intelligence. It’s the High Court of Australia that will determine whether they may be legally said, or not