"If you can’t reconcile some of the things Phil says with his otherwise friendly demeanor—perhaps because you are gay, or a duck—I don’t blame you. And I don’t blame Duck Dynasty for keeping the show safely apolitical, ensuring smooth digestion for a mass audience."
By now, the choicer tidbits of GQ's interview have been widely disseminated. Here's the whole article, in case you'd also like to read the interviewer's reactions to Phil's bible-thumping.
First things first: Phil Robertson is a goddam-fucking homophobic bigot. When you compare a sex act between consenting adults to asshole-religious-fanatics flying planes into buildings, you're an asshole-religious-fanatic who hates gays. When you literally tell people that allowing sodomy is the the start of allowing anything and the source of America's problems, you're a fucking homophobic bigot. Period. When Trent Lott told us that integration was the start of modern-day American problems, people correctly assumed that meant he favored segregation. Trent Lott ended up resigning, because acting like you like Black people but still want them to use different drinking fountains is just no longer credible. However, claiming that you love homosexuals while telling them their sex acts should be as criminal as blowing up a pizza joint, and that you hope that they renounce their "lifestyle" so they can be your "brothers" is somehow, still, supposed to be a rational opinion.
Phil, what if we don't want to be your brothers and sisters in Jesus? What if the Christian family just has no appeal for us? Phil's greatest asshole tendency in this article is to assume that everyone wants to be saved like him. No, we don't. We don't want to be involved in this man's life of control freak antics over his family. We don't want anything to do with a man who won't even apologize to people he's beaten up before becoming saved. We don't want anything to do with a white Southerner who insists that he certainly never saw any Black people being mistreated.
And now we get to what's been ignored: Phil is basically saying the same thing Germans said all through the summer of 1945. We didn't know it was happening. We didn't see it. No one complained to us. That lasted until Nuremberg. Hey Phil, does the North really have to stage a version of a war crimes trial documenting Jim Crow? Could you not have cracked open a fucking book to learn that Black people who complained or tried to change the situation in any way got lynched, run out of town, or beaten? Will someone please drag this asshole motherfucker to a room, tie his beard to something, and make him watch Mississippi Burning?
I'm tired of hearing Southerners' lame ass excuses for why it never occurred to them that Black people might not have liked segregation, no voting rights, and a constant campaign of terroristic violence to completely smother anything resembling free speech. Oh, wait, that would get in the way of their own persecution complexes.
To white Southerners (and some white Northerners, I'll admit), the abdication of power whites were never entitled to is seen as some sort of oppression. So, I'll clarify: Phil, you and your ilk were never entitled to keep women and non-white men from voting. You were never entitled to keep them ignorant. You were never entitled to keep them out of professions you wanted to preserve for your own status. You were never entitled to outlaw consensual sex between people of the same sex. You were never entitled to keep homosexuals from marrying. You were never entitled to do any of these things, so taking these powers away from you is the opposite of persecution.
Preventing you and your ilk from persecuting others is the key to everything other ethnic groups, women, the disabled, and the LGBT community have achieved. I know you think the law shouldn't protect the freedoms they need to achieve. I know you think the law should protect a non-existent "right" you think you have to treat others any way you want to.
Phil's fans may think he's been unfairly silenced to keep him from preaching his faith, but what about the Dixie Chicks? What about Helen Thomas, Martin Bashir, and Alec Baldwin? I guess only preaching their bible is the only free speech that shouldn't have any consequences.
Phil's fans think he is being punished unfairly for just stating what their sacred book says. Legally, they have no leg to stand on. So they just argue that the decision came from some sort of gay mafia that doesn't want any Christian to say anything, ever. Last time I checked, your homophobic rants were still safe in your own churches. Phil's fans ignore one thing that is lacking from the First Amendment: there's no obligation, for anyone, to listen to anything Phil wants to say. A&E doesn't have to be a megaphone for someone trying to convert people, or convince them that "love" can be found, but only if you agree that Phil is right and you must live just like him. Phil, my advice is to find a small island just for yourself. Preferably one that is being slowly taken away by rising sea levels. The ocean will never tire of your preaching.
