Do you support this?
Phil On Homosexuality
Same-sex sexual activities are "shameful" and "perversions." He also implied that homosexuality was a result of people who "suppress the truth about God," therefore, causing God's wrath.
"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."
Phil On Growing Up in Pre-Civil-Rights-Era Louisiana
“I never, with my eyes, saw the mistreatment of any black person. Not once. Where we lived was all farmers. The blacks worked for the farmers. I hoed cotton with them. I’m with the blacks, because we’re white trash. We’re going across the field.... They’re singing and happy. I never heard one of them, one black person, say, ‘I tell you what: These doggone white people’—not a word!... Pre-entitlement, pre-welfare, you say: Were they happy? They were godly; they were happy; no one was singing the blues.”
Wow, thank you for that very current and insightful commentary, Phil!
Some of us might think that Phil's statements were antiquated and insensitive, but not all of us. Phil has his supporters. You know? The usual suspects. The firebrands who get behind this type of ‘free speech’ and get everybody riled up about First Amendment rights. There’s Sean Hannity, Sarah Palin and pretty much the entire Fox News team. But then an unexpected guest showed up at the party. Color me surprised when Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal jumped on the bandwagon in support of Phil Robertson. Wow! Does Bobby know he is of Indian descent? Does he have any idea that when people have a specific view of gays and minorities that foreigners aren’t that far behind? To these people it doesn’t matter whether or not you were born in the U.S. They do sight checks, and if they don’t like what they see you get voted off the island just like the other undesirables.
Even Geraldo Rivera is on Phil’s side. I’m still trying to wrap my brain around the fact that old Geraldo is working for Fox News. Didn’t he get his nose broken by a racist who threw a chair at him back when he was doing Jerry Springer type television?
But, back to Phil. I want to make something perfectly clear. I am of the mind that people can express their opinions in any way that they choose, it’s their right. But I am also of the mind that when people express opinions that are offensive to whole groups of people that they must also be prepared for the backlash. If folks have the right to say what they want, then folks have the right to react to what has been said. If that reaction presents itself as your boss forcing you to take a little time away from your job, then those are the breaks.
You being suspended or even fired doesn’t mean that your First Amendment rights are being stepped on, it just means that there are consequences to your actions. Something we seem to have forgotten in this country. We as a society. We as a nation have the responsibility to be thoughtful about the negativity that we put out there. Certain statements, certain actions, certain opinions can create an atmosphere that if it goes uncontested can become dangerous.
Think about this. The first black people were stolen from their home and brought to this country to be enslaved around 1619, and they were freed when the civil war ended in 1865 (actually they were supposed to be freed in 1863 when President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, but sh** happens) that is 246 years of a whole nation thinking it was just fine to treat generation, after generation, after generation of an entire race of people like animals. And as if that wasn’t long enough, in 1965, 100 years after they were set free, these people were still marching for civil rights. And even later, in the 1970s schools were still being integrated. That’s 350 years of the ruling race not getting tired of treating their fellow human beings like chattel. That’s kind of scary. They never got tired of being cruel.
During World War II we gathered up the Japanese that lived in this country and from 1942 to 1946 they were put in interment camps. They were called War Relocation Camps, but we know what they really were. Granted, this only happened on the west coast and Hawaii, but most of these people were American citizens. But hey, to make up for the mistreatment, in 1988 President Ronald Reagan signed legislation that apologized for the internment stating that the government’s actions were based on "race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership". The U.S. government eventually disbursed more than $1.6 billion in reparations to Japanese Americans who had been interned and their heirs.
Black people were never offered reparations. I guess the cost would have been too enormous. Oh well.
All I’m trying to say is. . .we are capable of some very nasty things in this country and the people that make those types of nasty things happen are making a comeback. And they have proven that if given enough rope they will hang you with it. They may not be wearing white hoods with points on the top, and maybe they aren’t burning crosses on lawns or blowing up churches with little girls in them, but they are there. They are making their presence known. In little ways.
They say things like ‘Of course I’ve used the N word’ like it’s the most natural thing in the world to do. They say ’Stop acting like a f**’ or ’That’s so gay’. This summer on Big Brother a couple of the girls in the house were making racist comments like it was an everyday occurrence. What I found so amazing was they were talking about Asian people doing nails and eating rice in a derogatory way. Hello! The host of the show is an Asian and she's married to the president of the network!
Are people really that ignorant? Or do they really not care?
We want to tell ourselves that now that we have a black president it proves how far we’ve come in this country as far as race relations go. I don’t think so. Racism is on the rise. People are saying and doing things out in public that they weren’t saying or doing fifteen years ago. We are going backwards people, and I’m getting nervous.
People have become apathetic and lazy. That’s a dangerous combination. And it leaves our society vulnerable to those who wish to push their own agendas. We must always remember and never forget how brutal we can be to one another, because as soon as we forget, that's when they will start loading people that disagree with them on trains and sending them away. And no one will say a word in protest.
To some people, Phil Robertson’s statements might be considered harmless, and maybe they are, but when you start to take a long hard look at the number of harmless statements that have been said over the last ten years you start to see a pattern. It’s been going on for too long. Everybody is taking their turn at intolerance. From Mel Gibson to Dog the Bounty Hunter (A&E really knows how to pick ‘em) to Alec Baldwin to Paula Deen to Megyn Kelly taking a stance on how white Santa Clause is. Really?
It has got to stop people, or a Duck Dynasty is the last thing we’ll need to worry about because we will have reverted to our old ways, and end up creating a Dynasty of Hate. And nobody wants that. Right?
Excellent. Very well written. I am indeed frightened for future days...
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