Let me see if I have this right. According to the Thought Police, Duck Dynasty’s patriarch Phil Robertson is a bigot because he said what the majority of the planet believes namely, that men prefer a woman’s yoo-hoo instead of a man’s Chattahoochee canal?
I know that’s not exactly what he said during the GQ interview where he dared to tell everyone what he or she and A&E already clearly knew he thought. I merely cleaned that sentence up for the children. And by children, I mean the rabid gay adults who freak out when they read the words “vagina” and “anus” in the same sentence.
Hey, reflexively irate, rage blinded, LGBT community: do you really have to have banned from humanity every word and person that hurts your fragile feelings? Are we really expected to fly a foot off your vocabulary taste wing and never deviate one angstrom? Good Lord, man. Grow a pair. No one wants to live in your catty world of “gay-approved-speech-only.” What will the Muslims do?
The cool thing is that not everyone in the homosexual community has bought into the kneecapping of the naysayers of their penchants. One lesbian of prominent note is the feminist professor and columnist Camille Paglia who said on Laura Ingraham’s radio show this past week during the Duck ruckus the following:
“I speak with authority here because I was openly gay before the 'Stonewall Rebellion,' when it cost you something to be so," she said. "And I personally feel as a libertarian that people have the right to free thought and free speech. In a democratic country, people have the right to be homophobic as they have the right to support homosexuality -- as I one-hundred-percent do. If people are basing their views against gays on the Bible, again they have a right to religious freedom there … to express yourself in a magazine in an interview -– this is the level of punitive PC, utterly fascist, utterly Stalinist, OK, that my liberal colleagues in the Democratic party and on college campuses have supported and promoted over the last several decades. It's the whole legacy of the free speech 1960's that have been lost by my own party."
OMG, eh? Can Camille say that? Does she get a pass because of her sexual proclivities? Is her college and publisher doomed to get a nasty pastel background, caps lock on, extra exclamation points email demanding she be banned from writing and teaching her politically incorrect heresy of … of … uh … um … free thought and free speech?
As far as I’m concerned, Miss Camille slammed GLAAD and their ilk more than old daddy Phil did by comparing you cats to Hilter and Stalin. Cowabunga. Run home and tell mommy, whiners. By the way, Ms. Paglia, if you’re reading this right now I’d like to tell you, and I’m not ashamed of it, that I love you and appreciate your stand for liberty and uncommon common sense.
Another reasoned voice from the homosexual community is Brandon Ambrosino who said in his Time column last week,
I’m undecided on whether or not I think Phil actually is homophobic, although I certainly think his statement was offensive, and not only to the LGBT community. But I also think that if I were to spend a day calling ducks with Phil, I’d probably end up liking him — even in spite of his position on gay men. It’s quite possible to throw one’s political support behind traditional, heterosexual marriage, and yet not be bigoted. I’m reminded of something Bill Maher said during the height of the Paula Deen controversy: “Do we always have to make people go away?” I think the question applies in this situation too.
Then Brandon put this query to the gay community …
Why is our go-to political strategy for beating our opponents to silence them? Why do we dismiss, rather than engage them? One of the biggest pop-culture icons of today just took center stage to “educate” us about sexuality. I see this as an opportunity to further the discussion, to challenge his limited understanding of human desire, to engage with him and his rather sizable audience — most of whom, by the way, probably share his views— and to rise above the endless sea of tweet-hate to help move our LGBT conversations to where they need to go. G.K. Chesterton said that bigotry is “an incapacity to conceive seriously the alternative to a proposition.” If he is right — and he usually is — then I wonder if the Duck Dynasty fiasco says more about our bigotry than Phil’s.
As the Duck Dynasty storm was raging last Thursday, I went to my gym in Miami to work out my old crippled ass and while there I asked a buddy of mine who is definitely not a “Bible-thumper” what he thought of the Duck dust-up. Without missing a beat he made it clear that he wasn’t a Christian, doesn’t care about what others do with their naughty bits and that he thinks the radical gay activists should shut their quiche-hole and that Phil has every right and reason to speak his mind.
Taking the experiment further, I quizzed a cute twenty-something waitress at an establishment I frequent when I write my columns on Friday afternoons what she thought about the GQ/DD/LGBT/GLAAD war and without a hiccup she said, “What? It’s now weird that men like vagina more than a man’s anus? That’s crap! No pun intended.”
Interestingly, the place where I’m writing is right next to a massive horse track which reminds me of Mark Twain’s famous quote that, “it’s the difference of opinion that makes horse races.” Frankly, I love It’s the difference of opinion. That’s why I dug, as a Christian, the late Christopher Hitchens who brutalized my beliefs and made me a better man for it.
Look, I prefer a nation where argument and differences and the freedom to vent them in the most passionate manner rules the roost. Without that kind of freedom we have an Iran and I hear that Iran sucks for both Christians and homosexuals.
So, my modest proposal is this: let everyone who believes whatever it is say it and live it out for all to see and let we the people decide for ourselves who we’re going to follow. Amen.