Kathleen Parker December 24, 2013

It’s Christmas and a strange white-bearded fellow utteringquack-quack-quack has streaked across the continent, dumping a largesack of something on America’s hearth.

Phil Robertson — millionaire star of “Duck Dynasty” — seems anunlikely antagonist as 2013 wraps up. As all sentient beings know bynow, he was suspended from the wildly popular A&E program forcomments he made about gays during a recent GQ interview.

Suddenly our nation is consumed anew with impassioned debate about nearly everyfoundational principle — freedom of speech, religious freedom, civilrights and same-sex marriage.

The last is relativelyuncontroversial in some states and most urban areas, but not in ruralAmerica where hunters convene — or among fundamentalist Christians, forwhom biblical literalism is a virtue — and certainly not among millionsof “Duck Dynasty” fans. Needless to say, these three groups overlap considerably.

Robertson isn’t just a megastar in waterfowl world, he is the composite character so loathed by liberals and certain elites who would nigh perish at thethought of close contact with his sort — a white, fundamentalist,Bible-thumping, duck-killing yahoo who somehow missed the civil rightsmovement, not to mention the New England Enlightenment.

Distilled, Robertson said two things in particular that provoked protests outsidethe bayou. One, that homosexual acts are sins, which is hardly newsamong recipients of the Gospel (hate the sin, love the sinner). Two, hesaid that African Americans he worked with during the Jim Crow era werejust fine. “They were godly; they were happy; no one was singing theblues,” he said.

Except, of course, many blacks were singing theblues and had been since about the 19th century when plantation slavesinvented the genre while toiling in the Mississippi Delta not far fromRobertson’s haunts.

Robertson’s words released an onslaught offire and brimstone not seen since God unleashed his fury on Sodom.Speaking of which, it is tempting to note that God was rather selectivein his outrage back then. Furious with homosexuals, he seemed to have no problem with Lot, whom he saved, when Lot offered his virgin daughtersto townsmen who were demanding to “know” the angels hanging with Lotthat God had sent to destroy Sodom.

Similarly, sort of,Robertson’s fans didn’t seem to care much about the vile, X-ratedimagery he used to make his point to GQ concerning the relative meritsof human apertures for sexual gratification. Granted, GQ is read mostlyby old teenagers and young adults, but is this really the fellowChristians want instructing America’s camouflaged kiddos?

Robertson’s blunt talk caused a stir not because he was delivering tablets from the burning bush but because he was clearly speaking outside his wheelhouse to the detriment of people whose equal rights — even their very lives — are endangered by such talk. Robertson may “love the sinner,” but yousure can’t tell.

Executives at A&E clearly were banking onhicks acting like hicks, not expressing what they actually think. Butthen, what did they expect from a Louisiana duck-call whittlin’,part-time preacher, for Pete’s sake?

“Aw, shucks, the more love in the world the better is what I always say”?

To the greater point, the fact that a healthy, if dwindling, percentage of the country feels helplessly opposed to redefining marriage reveals an existential divide that won’t easily be bridged. Robertson didn’t create it; he exposed it.

He also helped illuminate our persistent confusion about gay rights. South Carolina’s largest newspaper, the State, recently featured two storiesback to back — one dealing with “Duck Dynasty” fans protestingRobertson’s indefinite hiatus, the other about Methodists defrocking Frank Schaefer for performing his gay son’s marriage.

One is damned for being anti-gay marriage and the other for being pro —both in the name of the same deity, presumably. So which is it? TheChristian, as well as the constitutional, way seems to me the latter.But fundamentalism, regardless of religion, finds refuge in the toxicswamp of moral certitude.

In other near-certainties, Robertsonreportedly will be back on the show when it returns in January. Withshelves emptied of “Duck Dynasty” paraphernalia by loyal consumers, andA&E facing boycott threats, there’s too much money at stake.

Profit, not equal rights or freedom of religion or any of the other high-minded principles we seize to bolster our selective outrage, is the real coinof the realm. And, as if you didn’t know, it quacks like a duck.

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