December 21, 2013

Duck Dynasty star is a bigot

I tried to avoid the Duck Dynasty as long as possible. But Phil Robertson made it impossible with his asinine utterances.

‘Duck Dynasty’ Star Suspended Over Remarks About Gay People “Duck Dynasty” star Phil Robertson has been suspended from filming the A&E reality series following his remarks about gay people where he called homosexuality illogical in a recent interview with GQ magazine.

“It seems like, to me, a vagina–as a man–would be more desirable than a man’s anus. That’s just me,” Robertson stated. “I’m just thinking: There’s more there! She’s got more to offer. I mean, come on, dudes! You know what I’m saying? But hey, sin: It’s not logical, my man. It’s just not logical.”
Homosexuality is illogical? Almost every aspect of nature (natural disasters, mass extinctions, etc.) is illogical. So what's your point...that everything God created is horribly flawed?

Humans do tons of things that aren't "logical." Getting tattoos...smoking...skydiving...gambling...praying...hating people because of their skin color...etc. And these are choices, unlike homosexuality. So you're saying you oppose homosexuality, but not an infinity of other human activities, because it's illogical? And you think that position is logical?!

The excrement really hit the fan when people began noting Robertson's racism:



Well, thanks for clearing that up. Out in the fields, with no businesses, schools, or voting booths around, Robertson didn't see any mistreatment. The crows and the flies treated everyone equally.

In related news, Megyn Kelly insisted that members of Duck Dynasty have been and always will be white.

Analyses

Many people ripped Robertson for his homophobic and racist views. Here are a couple of them:

What The ‘Duck Dynasty’ Scandal Tells Us About Race, Homophobia, And The Media

By Alyssa Rosenberg“Phil and his family claim to be Christian, but Phil’s lies about an entire community fly in the face of what true Christians believe,” he said. “He clearly knows nothing about gay people or the majority of Louisianans—and Americans—who support legal recognition for loving and committed gay and lesbian couples. Phil’s decision to push vile and extreme stereotypes is a stain on A&E and his sponsors, who now need to re-examine their ties to someone with such public disdain for LGBT people and families.”Evangelical church’s ugly truth: “Duck Dynasty” and Christian racists

Many people of faith have rushed to denounce Phil Robertson's homophobia—but his racism is a different story

By Brittney Cooper
Liberal-minded folk, some Christians included, have been outraged at his homophobia, while conservative Christians of all races jumped to defend his right to free speech. Many of these Christians feel particularly threatened by what they call “censorship” of Robertson, because the belief that homosexuality is a sin, and the right to declare that belief freely without recourse, has become for many of these people a defining marker of their identity as Christians.

A reluctant evangelical, I reject conservative theological teachings on homosexuality; the violence that the Church does to gay people in the name of God is indeed one of the primary reasons for my reluctance. But I am also ambivalent about the Church because of its continued subjugation of women and its failure to be forthright about its continuing racism problem.


Conservatives love racists and homophobes

Did conservatives speak out against Robertson's repugnant views? If you've lived in America since the Reagan years, you know they did not.

Conservatives rally around suspended ‘Duck Dynasty’ star Phil Robertson“Phil Robertson is a new American hero,” said broadcaster Bryan Fischer, of the American Family Association, in a series of Twitter posts. “He said exactly what the great majority of Americans believe. Phil Robertson is right. It’s a simple matter of plumbing. Easy to figure out what is supposed to go where. And where not.”

Sarah Palin, a reality show star herself, also weighed in.

“Free speech is endangered species; those ‘intolerants’ hatin’ & taking on Duck Dynasty patriarch for voicing personal opinion take on us all,” Palin tweeted.
Yeah, he's the greatest hero since Paula Deen and George Zimmerman. Or so many conservatives would claim.

With Phil Robertson, Paula Deen, Ted Nugent, Joe the Plumber, and George Zimmerman, Republicans don't need governors or senators. They've got a whole lineup of potential presidential candidates.

You want someone from outside the Beltway? These clowns are barely members of society.

Like mother, like daughter:

Bristol Palin explains how you should feel about freedom of speech about having not-vagina sex

By TBoggTo sum up: freedom can sometimes be uncomfortable (see, The Book of Kelly: ““Just because it makes you feel uncomfortable doesn’t mean it has to change.”) but, when someone says things that make you feel uncomfortable, you should shut the hell up and not criticize their words with your own words because that is what freedom of speech is all about….

Finally, this piece of garbage:

Camille Paglia: Duck Dynasty suspension 'utterly fascist, utterly Stalinist'On Thursday, we said that A&E's actions against Duck Dynasty's Phil Robertson shows that liberalism is an ideology of intolerance and tyrannical oppression. Those sentiments were echoed Thursday by dissident feminist Camille Paglia, who told radio talk show host Laura Ingraham the move is "utterly fascist" and "utterly Stalinist," the Daily Caller reported.Facebook friend Brad responded:What a joke. First of all, examiner.com is just people's blogs--no journalistic training or even writing skill required. Just sign up and get paid by the click. Second, Stalin was a fascist? Someone needs to retake high school world history! And third, there couldn't be anything MORE capitalist about this guy's suspension. It's a major corporation firing someone to protect their brand image and profits. What's not for conservatives to love about that?Right. If a corporation fired someone for any other "free speech" activity--organizing a union, revealing a scandal, claiming sexual harassment, etc.--conservatives absolutely would say "It's the corporation's right" and "That's how capitalism works."

Same for A&E, morons. So conservatives are stupid and obvious hypocrites.

First time a conservative defends any of the speech examples I gave, please lemme know. It hasn't happened yet.

As for Paglia, I don't think it matters that Examiner.com published this. What matters is that Paglia is a "dissident feminist" turned right-wing loon. I'm not sure she has any credibility anymore, and who cares what one person thinks?

When she says:I think that this intolerance by gay activists toward the full spectrum of human beliefs is a sign of immaturity, juvenilityshe apparently means the tolerance of racist or homophobic rants. Damn straight we aren't going to tolerate them anymore. We also aren't going to tolerate the defenders of racism and bigotry and their asinine misreading of the US Constitution.

If you don't like how America works, dumbasses, you can get the hell out of the country. Move to Saudi Arabia, Duck Dynasty and other friends of bigotry, where you can stone gays, women, and other "sinners" to your heart's content.



The right to be bigoted?

2013: The year in whiteness

From Phil Robertson to Megyn Kelly, peddling white grievance became a bigger, crazier, more lucrative racket

By Joan Walsh
The next week, “Duck Dynasty’s” Phil Robertson also became a martyr for the white right, after A&E briefly suspended him for holding forth on the nastiness of gay sex while insisting African Americans were happy in the Jim Crow South.

The new hysteria and hypocrisy was crystallized by one surreal fact: While paranoid white righties were fighting for their allegedly endangered right to celebrate Christmas (with their white Santa), they could watch a “Duck Dynasty” Christmas marathon on A&E, underscoring that there’s neither a war on Christmas nor on bigoted pseudo-Christians like Robertson. But there’s a lot of cash to be made, and fear to be stoked, by claiming both.

Kelly and Robertson and kindred spirits like Sarah Palin charted a bold new civil rights frontier in 2013: fighting for the right of white people to say false, stupid and bigoted things without facing criticism, let alone paying any real penalty. Palin has long made herself out to be a victim of mean liberals, but this year her anger-mongering took on a more explicitly racial tinge. She bashed Jeb Bush for casting aspersions on the fertility of white people—Bush did make an admittedly stupid remark about immigrants being “more fertile,” but if you thought that would get him in trouble with immigrant groups, not whites, you thought wrong—and later in the year declared her inviolable right to equate the federal deficit she wrongly blames on our first black president with “slavery.” She closed the year announcing she stands with Phil Robertson, even though she had to confess to Fox’s Greta Van Susteren that she hadn’t read the GQ interview that got him in minor temporary trouble.
Conservatives are trying to paint the criticism as an attack on traditional Christian values. They're cloaking it in such weasel words as Paglia's "full spectrum of human beliefs."

Not a single person would have protested if Robertson had talked about God, angels, Satan, hell, Genesis (creationism), the Flood, the Ten Commandments, the Immaculate Conception, the Resurrection, the Rapture, or any other Christian doctrine. We're objecting to his bigotry, not to the Bible.

Proving the point, we would've protested exactly the same way if he had based his homophobia on science--which he actually tried to do. If he hadn't mentioned the Bible at all.

Again, his bigotry is the issue, not the religion or the science from whence he got his bigoted beliefs. We've denounced many homophobes who did not invoke the Bible and we'll continue to do so.

More conservative bigotry

Robertson quickly proved that his racist and homophobic were not misquoted or taken out of context. In fact, the context is clear. He's a typical fundamentalist fanatic who thinks gays are evil and women are property.

Phil Robertson demonized LGBT people in 2010 sermon: ‘They invent ways of doing evil’[T]he recently publicized sermon, which was delivered almost two years before “Duck Dynasty” first aired, adds even more context to Robertson’s comments and his beliefs about same-sex relationships.

“Women with women, men with men, they committed indecent acts with one another, and they received in themselves the due penalty for their perversions,” Robertson said. “They’re full of murder, envy, strife, hatred. They are insolent, arrogant, God-haters. They are heartless, they are faithless, they are senseless, they are ruthless. They invent ways of doing evil. That’s what you have 235 years, roughly, after your forefathers founded the country.”
He keeps getting misunderstood! In his heart, he loves the gays and the blacks!

Duck Dynasty star: Girls should carry a Bible, cook and marry ‘when they are 15′At a Sportsmen’s Ministry talk in 2009, Robertson had some advice for a young man.

“Make sure that she can cook a meal, you need to eat some meals that she cooks, check that out,” he said. “Make sure she carries her Bible. That’ll save you a lot of trouble down the road. And if she picks your ducks, now, that’s a woman.”

“They got to where they’re getting hard to find,” Robertson remarked. “Mainly because these boys are waiting until they get to be about 20 years old before they marry ‘em. Look, you wait until they get to be 20 years old, the only picking that’s going to take place is your pocket.”

The Duck Commander company founder added: “You got to marry these girls when they are about 15 or 16, they’ll pick your ducks. You need to check with mom and dad about that of course.”
Oddly, Biblical literalists like Robertson have nothing to say about the real Sodomites:



I wonder why not?

For more on LGBT issues, see Rick Perry Bashes Gays and All Bigotries Are Similar.

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