Best stick to rugby, Israel Folau

The days of judging our neighbours and fellow New Zealanders by the church they attend, if any, or way they conduct their private lives, have long gone.

By what strange twisted logic does a rugby player assume the right to make public pronouncements about anything other than rugby?

Australian rugby player Israel Folau’s comments, that gay people would be condemned to hell if they failed to repent, would be laughable if such rugby stars did not have a degree of, often unearned, public credibility. Like so-called celebrity endorsements, there is an illogical assumption that those who achieve success in any field, be it sport or business, somehow develop expertise in almost anything else. They don’t.

To their credit, many of Folau’s peers in the rugby world, in New Zealand and Australia, have condemned the illadvised comments but is that enough?

Like it or not, some of these topranking sportsmen are seen as role models by impressionable youngsters and that places an extra burden on selectors and team managers. If Folau was making comment on the intricacies of rugby he might have been worth listening to but he was making comment on a complex human social issue about which he appears to be as ignorant and ill-informed as quite a few others in recent times.

Last year Logan Robertson, founder of the Westcity Bible Baptist Church in Avondale, said during a sermon that he was not against gay marriage ‘‘as long as a bullet goes through their head the moment they kiss’’. Robertson also suggested women should not be allowed to vote! Really?

Brian Tamaki, another self-styled bishop of a church he set up for himself, also regularly launches into irrational attacks on the gay community. Last year he even suggested the Canterbury earthquakes had been caused by gays, sinners and murderers. By what superstitious methods they were supposed to have brought about that calamity he did not say but he seemed to attract at least some support for his outrageous stupidity. Like a cross between a black leather-clad bikie of the seventies and a parasitic television evangelist, Tamaki is vaguely entertaining when there is nothing else in the news. Taking him seriously on human relations is oxymoronic at best.

It can be reasonably claimed, however, that we should respect the right of these people to express their religious opinions, and indeed we should, but that right carries with it an equal responsibility for them to respect the views of others. They don’t.

One obvious common denominator with these self-styled experts on human morality and the consequences for those who don’t live as they, at least, say they do, is new age religious intolerance. There are many others like them, from large communes to discreet neighbourhood groups. Another common denominator is the misery they bring for too many of the more vulnerable in their congregations.

A not so obvious characteristic many of them also have in common is the wealth some of them accumulate from their followers and that is not a new development. History is riddled with religious charlatans who have preyed on the fearful and gullible in society. Most don’t last very long but others have given rise to huge dynasties headed by obscenely wealthy people who do little beyond reinterpret the vague writings of suppressed desert tribesmen on the fringes of the Roman Empire two thousand years ago.

All of them seem to have missed one important development since the dark days of the Inquisition several hundred years ago – the days of judging our neighbours and fellow New Zealanders by the church they attend, if any, or way they conduct their private lives, have long gone.

Churches of all denominations had a powerful influence over their congregations in times gone by and some still attempt to interfere in private family lives even today but secular law prevents much of the cruelty of the past.

Other churches provide a nonjudgmental and safe haven for those who need and enjoy that activity but their image is tarnished by a few idiots who assume a higher station in society than is their entitlement.

I have no personal knowledge of the gay community and no wish to find out, but they, like all those who share this country with me, have an undeniable right go about their private lives free of the ignorant bigotry that has become all too common in a few new age churches in recent years.

Let the rugby players stick to rugby and let self-styled or self-appointed pastors do a little more in depth reading of those ancient writings of two thousand years ago.

Somewhere among those pages there is sound advice on tolerance and advice against judging others.