“It Was Not About His Faith”: Hero Passenger Who Confronted Anti-Abortion Preacher Speaks Out
Malcolm Frawley, AKA Book Man, took to The Project to explain his side of things.
Earlier this week, one man armed with nothing but a paperback and a respect for the sanctity of personal freedoms took on a loud-mouthed American anti-abortionist. In the process, he became a hero — Book Man.
The story began when a travelling American extremist Christian, Phillip Blair, decided that a crowded train carriage was the perfect place to rail against the sinners and the non-believers. Only, before long, his fellow passengers decided that enough was enough, and hurled various, increasingly curt, demands for him to stop. Leading that charge against Blair was a man sitting in the corner reading a paperback — now identified as Malcolm Frawley, though the internet call him Book Man.
“You’re forcing your opinion on everyone on this train,” Frawley, AKA Book Man, tells Blair at one point in a video of the incident. “If you ask for our time, we have the right to say no, we’re not giving it to you.”
Now, following a social media reaction to the video that has deemed Frawley a hero, he has appeared on The Project to discuss the incident.
“I think the trigger for me was hearing this loud voice start to talk about our unborn children,” Frawley said. “And I wondered whether there were some women on that packed carriage who might not be interested in a conversation about unborn children that was being conducted by a man.”
The Sunday Project Exclusive:
Malcolm Frawley AKA Book Man is the man being hailed a hero after after he stood up to an anti-abortion preacher on a Sydney train. We chatted with Malcolm about the situation which unfolded. pic.twitter.com/3sZQVi3yVE— The Project (@theprojecttv) April 7, 2019
From there, Frawley points out that it wasn’t what Blair had to say, necessarily, that made him so angry, but instead how he chose to say it.
“It was not about his faith, in particular … I’ve worked professionally with Christian people and Muslim people and Jewish people and atheist people, and you know what? They’re all people. I don’t see a problem with any of them.
“But for me faith is a personal and perhaps even a private thing. So if you and I wanted to sit down over a coffee or a beer and discuss our beliefs that might be fine, but I don’t want them to be inflicted on me in public when I’m trying to read a book.”
Shortly thereafter, it was suggested to Frawley that he might need to invest in some noise-cancelling headphones.
“Have you ever heard of how expensive they are?” Frawley shot back with a smile.
We stan a legend, clearly.