Rugby star criticized for linking Australia's deadly bush fires to same-sex marriage, abortion [View all]
Source: Washington Post
Rugby star criticized for linking Australia’s deadly bush fires to same-sex marriage, abortion
By Cindy Boren
11/18/2019, 2:44:17 p.m.
Israel Folau, a former Rugby Australia player, is being criticized for “appallingly insensitive” comments linking the country’s bush fire crisis to its laws on same-sex marriage and abortion.
Folau, who was released by the team in April after making anti-gay comments on social media, created a 10-minute video sermon posted to the Truth of Jesus Christ Church Sydney in which he says the bush fires and drought are “a little taste of God’s judgment.”
“I’ve been looking around at the events that’s been happening in Australia, this past couple of weeks, with all the natural disasters, the bush fires and the droughts,” he said. After reading a passage from the Bible’s Book of Isaiah, he linked bush fires and drought to legalizing same-sex marriage and abortion.
“The events that have happened here in Australia, in the last couple of years — God’s word says for a man and a woman to be together ... they’ve come and changed this law,” he said.
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The National Party’s Barnaby Joyce urged people to not engage with Folau, telling the Seven network (via the Australian Associated Press and Perthnow.com) that “He throws rocks at us so he feels good, we throw rocks back at him so we feel good … but not one of those actions is making a sandwich for a person fighting the fires."
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Read more:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2019/11/18/rugby-star-criticized-linking-australias-deadly-bush-fires-same-sex-marriage-abortion/