On Thursday, conservative political activist Ralph Reed said the 800,000-member Faith & Freedom Coalition should boycott the A&E Network until “Duck Dynasty” star Phil Robertson’s suspension is lifted, calling it a “a brazen act of anti-Christian bigotry,” Newsmax reported.
Robertson was placed on suspension following brutally frank comments he made regarding homosexuality in an interview with GQ magazine.
After the interview was published, A&E came under fire from the Gay and Lesbian Alliance against Discrimination, and Robertson was placed on an indefinite suspension.
The move sparked an angry backlash across the Internet, with the “Boycott A&E Until Phil Robertson Is Put Back On Duck Dynasty” Facebook page receiving over 1 million likes in under 24 hours. Many other Facebook pages have sprung up and a Boycott A&E Twitter account is quickly gathering followers.
“Freedom of speech is not just for liberals,” the account said in one of its messages.
For many conservatives, A&E’s actions prove that despite all the talk of “tolerance” and “open-mindedness,” liberals as a group are the least tolerant of opposing opinions and have no problem silencing those with whom they disagree. While such actions were all the rage in countries like the former Soviet Union or Nazi Germany, they are alien in a country that has embraced free speech from its founding.
Reed explained that Robertson was not representing A&E’s views, but rather presenting his own personal opinions.
“He was specifically asked about his views on sin and God’s best plan for humanity — and he answered honestly, forthrightly, even directly,” Reed said. “His comments were based on his faith in God, not animus directed at gays or others who might be different from him.”
“To suspend Robertson under these circumstances is sanctioning him for holding Christian faith and beliefs — and it is a sign of a broader intolerance, bigotry, and discrimination against Christians that has no place in America,” he added.
Camille Paglia, a dissident feminist who works as a professor at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, went even farther than Reed in an interview with conservative talk show host Laura Ingraham, calling the suspension “utterly fascist, utterly Stalinist.”
“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,” she said. “This is the whole legacy of free speech 1960s that have been lost by my own party.”
“A&E – outrageous for suspending Phil. They knew his beliefs when they hired him..he was ON VIDEO. A&E has a litmus test on what we can say,” he tweeted.
“And when Phil did the interview with GQ … A&E obviously signed off. Of course the reporter was going to ask about his feelings toward gays,” he added.
In another tweet, Levin said he is gay and doesn’t agree with Robertson, but said the Duck Dynasty star has a right to his beliefs, which he said are “religious” and not based in hate.
Despite the backlash it has received from the millions of conservative Americans who say they are fed up with left-wing censorship and political correctness, GLAAD says it is researching other companies who are sponsoring Robertson, apparently with the intention of targeting them as well.
The popular southern-themed restaurant chain Cracker Barrel, for example, announced on Facebook that it had removed selected Duck Commander products from its shelves — specifically, products that bear Phil Robertson’s image. That announcement has also sparked a boycott. It is unclear if Cracker Barrel responded to pressure from GLAAD. The chain has since apologized and said it would sell Duck Dynasty products.
“We made a mistake, we listened to you, and we apologize. #DuckDynasty products are back in our stores,” the company said Sunday in a tweet.
Other sponsors, like Under Armour, have said they intend to continue their relationship with Robertson.
A post at the UK Daily Mail says the family believes it was essentially set-up by A&E in order to get the family to quit pushing its deeply-held Christian beliefs.
According to the family, a network representative was present when the interview was held and could have taken action to stop it from being published.
Instead, the unidentified family member said, the network used it as a way to tarnish the family.
But the effort appears to have backfired — big time.
The Robertsons also say they intend to stand by their beliefs no matter what.
“We believe in the word of the Bible exactly as it is written and we will call a sin a sin and a sinner a sinner. But we are all sinners, every one of us and we believe in redemption and that opening yourself up to Jesus Christ will save you,” the unnamed source said in a statement. “That is what Phil believes and that will not change. We are sorry if that has offended anyone, because that was never our intention. We believe in love and truth and that is it.”
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The only thing that has surprised me in the least about the DD/A&E “debacle” is that the DD folk seem to want it both ways: to have a hit show, which makes tons of cash, and to have the capacity to be yourself and say whatever you want. Those two things don’t go together, and it has little to do with our laws. It has much more to do with ratings.
On the other hand, the whole so-called controversy bodes very well for higher ratings, so call me a conspiracy theorist but this all looks very convenient for A&E.
What isn’t on A&E? Christian Peacemaker Teams suffering violence in Palestine. Bloodshed in the Central African Republic. Ugandan Christians risking death for standing up for their (gay) neighbors’ rights. Not sexy, and not on TV.-
Interesting idea, Liv.
I see the problem in this often repeated storyline a slightly different way:
A “conservative” says exactly what he or she means. The “liberals” go into shock and awe mode. “Conservatives” all rush to their teammate’s defense claiming infringement of “free speech rights.” The “conservative” comes back and clarifies his or her original statement in a “that’s not exactly what I meant” sort of way. And the blind-leading-blind media frenzy ensues from there.
My question in response to such nonsense is always, well, if THAT’s not EXACTLY what the “conservative” meant, WHY did he or she say it in the first place? To which, I usually get a response something like, “You can’t fault him or her for not being very good with words.” To which I say, horse hooey.
To me, the crux of this whole hubbub is the difference between “We believe in the word of the Bible exactly as it is written and we will call a sin a sin and a sinner a sinner a sinner,” and, “Start with homosexual behavior and just morph out from there.”
So, WHICH is it? There is a BIG difference between simply stating that you read the Bible to say the homosexual act is a sin versus stating the homosexual act is the original/primary sin out of which all other sins morph. The time for clarification upon such a sensitive topic was at the time of the interview, not under the ensuing chaos of America’s hunger for entertaining bouts.
If what Robertson truly meant to communicate was some order of magnitude for his own personal heebie jeebies in relation to a spectrum of “sins,” why didn’t he clarify that?
Is it just that folks who know they’re not very skilled with words need think twice before using them?
Really?
I find it ironic the 180 turns occuring over this issue. Does not A&E as a private concern have the right to decide who gets the soap box on their company’s shows, based upon whatever programming standards they deem appropriate? Just like companies headed by Christians are supposed to have a right to decide for their employees what manner of health coverage they may have, never mind their individual faith or philosophy? So to hear Ralph Reed or Tony Perkins fulminating over the injustice to Robertson’s individual freedom rings hollow, double standard big time. Nor should anyone have been even slightly surprised to learn about Robertson’s views on homosexuality, and the reaction of the always prickly Paglia shouldn’t be a surprise either. More broadly, A&E was happy to bring in the cash on the program, and maybe they should have been a mite fussier on applying their standards before turning on the cameras. Whether Robertson ends up as a footnote in the American Broadcast Bigotry Index (like Father Coughlin eighty years ago) remains to be seen.
Riff, rom my reading of Joe’s article and Phil’s statements, there was no confusion about his beliefs about the bible or homosexuality. He’s never backtracked on what he said, he has stood behind it without much response to all the public debate and response. Whatever one believes about that is another issue, but he’s articulating what he believes the Bible teaches.
Joe, do you know what the eventual outcome of the previous boycott the Chick-a-fil restaurant campaign produced?
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