Now that the weasels in suits running the A&E network have done the commercially expedient thing and reinstated Phil Robertson, some passing observations regarding our latest case of political correctness run amok.
First is the difficulty in identifying precisely what it was that Robertson said in his interview with GQ magazine that was so offensive as to cause him to be (temporarily) fired. Perusing his actual comments, as opposed to how the media reported them in their efforts to fan controversy, they seemed to consist of two fairly dreary and noncontroversial claims-that heterosexuals (like Robertson) are perplexed by the appeal of homosexuality and that Christian teaching disapproves of it as “sinful.”
As to the first point, even if the Duck Dynasty patriarch stated it with a bit more anatomical candor than needed, isn’t it inherent in the logic of the distinction between straight and gay that the former finds the latter’s sexual preferences perplexing and vice-versa? On the second, we are merely left to wonder when it became a firing offense to quote scripture.
News reports of the interview also claimed that Robertson compared homosexuality to bestiality, but he didn’t. Merely listing a range of “sins” identified within religious dogma doesn’t imply any equivalence among them (only that they are defined as sins). One could, for instance, list dozens of behaviors that our legal system defines as crimes without claiming that driving over the speed limit and committing murder are comparable offenses, just as in political theory we can correctly toss both Hitler’s Germany and Ferdinand Marcos’ Philippines into the dictatorship category without implying some equivalence in their ghastliness.
All of which leaves us with several unanswered questions, including whether there can be any compatibility or even room for compromise between an increasingly aggressive gay-rights movement and evangelical Christianity. More to the point, do Christians henceforth have to discard their longstanding doctrinal beliefs, or at least muzzle their expression, lest they suffer Robertson’s fate? Even those of us who don’t often find our way into a church pew might consider this a bizarre outcome in a country founded by refugees seeking religious freedom.
Going further, and assuming that the battle for gay marriage has been essentially won, what is the next step for the gay-rights movement in the sense of the broader desired outcome-the establishment of an adequate level of tolerance and respect for gays in American society (which would likely entail some conception of equality before the law, including legal protection from overt acts of discrimination or mistreatment), or a more ambitious mandatory approval of homosexuality by everyone? And if it is the latter, how can it be pursued without a fair amount of bullying, intimidation and coercion, with any dissent suppressed by the threat of dire punishments?
The thought emerges that this is about to get awfully tricky; the term “homophobe” is tossed about a great deal more than it is defined and there appears to be considerable uncertainty as to what kinds of things we need to say and not say to avoid classification as one.
At the least, such enforced conformity on a subject around which there will always be a wide range of views gives off the totalitarian whiff and is obviously antithetical to the ethos of a free society. There is, after all, a substantial difference between tolerating something and being forced to grant it approval.
Finally, when did we as a nation become so thin-skinned and easily offended such that we feel compelled to seek to crush any opinions that we disagree with? And what conceivable catastrophe was feared to ensue from Robertson’s comments lest he be swiftly reprimanded? As columnist Charles W. Cooke accurately noted, “Phil Robertson’s words quite literally affected nobody. They’re words.”
Indeed, are gays in contemporary America really so sensitive and insecure, and their status so vulnerable, that they cowered under their beds for days for fear that they would be the victims of mass lynching inspired by some scraggly old guy from the Louisiana swamps spouting Corinthians? And has the fear of giving offense become so great that we must now curtail freedom of speech and expression in case their exercise causes unendurable moral anguish in the reader or listener?
Aren’t Americans, gay and straight, black and white, male and female alike made of sterner stuff than that? And if they aren’t, shouldn’t they be? More to the point, how much further does this kind of nonsense have to go before the marketplace of ideas disappears and debate over more and more subjects ceases?
Deep down we all know what is happening here, don’t we? Because we suspect that it would take a long search to find a single gay person who was actually surprised or truly traumatized by what some reality TV character said in a magazine interview, and that the ensuing “outrage” was as ginned up and fake as could be; that it was all about teaching a lesson to those who might dissent from the new (and still evolving) orthodoxy on homosexuality.
In the end, though, the more amusing lesson was the one in basic mathematics taught to
A&E-that there are a lot more Christians in America than gays.
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Freelance columnist Bradley R. Gitz, who lives and teaches in Batesville, received his h.D. in political science from the University
Illinois.
Editorial, Pages 11 on 01/06/2014