Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

The Left's Militant, Proactive Intolerance
Townhall.com ^ | December 20, 2013 | David Limbaugh

Posted on 12/20/2013 5:07:26 AM PST by Kaslin

I must admit I've never watched "Duck Dynasty," but this brouhaha over A&E's suspension of the show's star, Phil Robertson, for his remarks on homosexual behavior in an interview with GQ has little to do with "gay" issues and everything to do with thought and speech control -- and the left's intolerance.

Robertson first expressed, in admittedly vulgar terms, his incredulity that some men find other men more attractive than women. Fine. Call him insensitive, but it's hardly a debatable point that heterosexuals don't quite grasp the allure of homosexuality.

But that doesn't seem to be his offending statement. When he identified homosexual behavior as a sin, he might as well have robbed a bank on live television. But when he cited the New Testament book of 1st Corinthians as including homosexuality in a list of sins, he had past the point of no return. He's outta there.

Of course, this isn't a violation of Robertson's First Amendment rights, because the censorial actions emanated not from the government, but from a private company, which is not constitutionally barred from doing what it did.

Constitutional issues aside, we are witnessing a profound display of leftist intolerance, and they need to be called on it. Some in the gay activist community demanded Robertson's head because of his "hate."

GLAAD spokesman Wilson Cruz said, "What's clear is that such hateful anti-gay comments are unacceptable to fans, viewers and networks alike." Robertson's removal "has sent a strong message that discrimination is neither a Christian nor an American value."

Discrimination? Who discriminated against whom? Did Robertson call for any action against homosexuals? Did he engage in any discriminatory action against gays? Or did he just voice an opinion that GLAAD finds contemptible?

Robertson, on the other hand, was the subject of discriminatory action. He was suspended for voicing his Christian beliefs.

The American left -- actually, it's a global phenomenon -- is increasingly intolerant of opposing viewpoints, while holding itself out as the exemplar of tolerance. I've mentioned before the defiance of one university administrator, who defended her suspension of a professor for making available to her students a magazine article that reportedly was critical of homosexual behavior. "We will not tolerate the intolerable," she said.

Similarly, I just read a tweet from CNN's Piers Morgan, which said, "Just as the 2nd Amendment shouldn't protect assault rifle devotees, so the 1st Amendment shouldn't protect vile bigots."

That's leftist tolerance in a nutshell. They demand tolerance, but they exhibit intolerance. Far from tolerating certain Christian views, the Obama left obliterates the conscience rights of Christian health care providers. Moreover, the tolerance they demand doesn't mean allowing everyone his point of view. It means you must accept as equally valid every idea they command you to accept -- and reject your own ideas and values if they don't meet their approval.

So many of us rail against the left's encroachments on our economic liberties but ignore their equal assaults on our religious and cultural liberties. Some economic conservatives insist that social conservatives keep our powder dry on social issues: Live and let live. Don't worry about the culture wars. We are headed toward national bankruptcy.

That's true, but they were telling us to shut up before Obama took us over the fiscal cliff. Besides, Republicans will never muster a winning coalition by relegating pro-life Christian conservatives to the back of the GOP bus.

As many are now belatedly realizing, the option of sitting out the culture wars is increasingly closed to us if we value our liberties, as we conservatives claim we do. Despite all of its sermonizing, the militant left will not live and let live. They demand uniformity of thought, and those who dissent from their PC standards are to be shunned and silenced.

The left is outraged that someone like Robertson would be so judgmental as to call homosexual behavior sinful. Yet they are, in effect, condemning as sinful those who express this opinion.

They are the ones being judgmental and are projecting that characteristic onto those who disagree with them. The irony is that Christians who agree with Robertson aren't acting as judges. Rather, they happen to believe that the Bible is the inspired Word of God and that it defines certain behaviors as sinful. They even admit to engaging in some of these behaviors themselves, recognizing that they are not exempt from the Biblical pronouncement that we are all sinners.

No, Christians don't believe they are the arbiters of sinful behavior, but that God is. But we're approaching that time -- we already may have arrived -- when the belief in certain scriptures will be deemed intolerably sinful and the believer outcast as a hater.

Gay activists have redefined hate to mean disapproval of certain lifestyles or practices, but in reality, if there's any hatred going on, it's from the activists toward the Christians who don't agree with them.

Christians and other social conservatives must fight for their beliefs and rights in this culture and quit foolishly believing their liberties will survive if they sit passively on the sidelines.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial
KEYWORDS:

1 posted on 12/20/2013 5:07:26 AM PST by Kaslin
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: Kaslin

I for one am thrilled the homosexuals are getting a taste of their own medicine for a change. Go Phil!


2 posted on 12/20/2013 5:09:54 AM PST by ilovesarah2012
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: ilovesarah2012

As they should.


3 posted on 12/20/2013 5:11:34 AM PST by Kaslin (He needed the ignorant to reelect him, and he got them. Now we all have to pay the consequenses)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: Kaslin

GLAAD spokesman Wilson Cruz said, “What’s clear is that such hateful anti-gay comments are unacceptable to fans, viewers and networks alike.” Robertson’s removal “has sent a strong message that discrimination is neither a Christian nor an American value.”
............................................................
Perhaps GLAAD spokesman Wilson Cruz better look around.

It is clear that a majority of fans and viewers agree 100% with Phil Robertson.

Robertsons removal has sent a message to straights, that this sh*t has gone far enough. It’s time to speak out.


4 posted on 12/20/2013 5:15:35 AM PST by Venturer (Half Staff the Flag of the US for Terrorists.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Kaslin

The new rage emanating from those mindless “COEXIST” bumper sticker is the new and more fashionable “TOLLERANCE” ones are a mark for me in traffic.

I love pulling up to them at a traffic light and rolling down my window in which they do likewise because they assume I have something terribly important to tell them. They won’t agree later when I make the statement;

It’s amazing how intolerant those are who demand tolerance.


5 posted on 12/20/2013 5:17:36 AM PST by mazda77
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Kaslin

“... admittedly in crude terms ...”

I’ve seen this theme a couple of times from rightist defenders of Mr. Robertson. I am not comfortable conceding even that small claim to the left-wing haters. After all, how does one describe a repulsive, degenerate lifestyle in anything BUT crude terms?

How do you pick up a turd from the clean end?


6 posted on 12/20/2013 5:28:03 AM PST by IronJack
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Kaslin
Robertson first expressed, in admittedly vulgar terms,

No, he didn't. He used the correct anatomical words "anus" and "vagina."

This meme needs to STOP that he expressed himself vulgarly.

7 posted on 12/20/2013 5:34:51 AM PST by Flycatcher (God speaks to us, through the supernal lightness of birds, in a special type of poetry.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Kaslin
Robertson first expressed, in admittedly vulgar terms, his incredulity that some men find other men more attractive than women...

That's not vulgar, the actual acts that homos commit behind closed doors is vulgar. A lot of the gay-marriage supporting public think of it as cutsie puppy love, when in actuality it is male-male sodomy and/or oral sex (or the female-female version). Homos define themselves by the sexual act itself, as opposed to a loving man-female relationship of commitment in the eyes of God.

8 posted on 12/20/2013 5:48:56 AM PST by broken_arrow1 (I regret that I have but one life to give for my country - Nathan Hale "Patriot")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Kaslin

It needs to be stated clearly that

the left hates Christianity and seeks to criminalize it,
and homosexuals are merely the vehicle that they’re using to do so.

They don’t hate Christians because they love gays.
The support gays because they hate Christians.


9 posted on 12/20/2013 5:51:54 AM PST by MrB (The difference between a Humanist and a Satanist - the latter admits whom he's working for)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Kaslin

Phil should never have granted the interview with GQ in the first place. It was an obvious setup. Conservatives must recognize hat the liberal media is part of the enemy.

Even Ted Cruz has a hard time when the jabbering media types talk over top of him at the very moment he is making his point.


10 posted on 12/20/2013 5:55:52 AM PST by SC_Pete
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Flycatcher
For extra added hilarity/hypocrisy/irony points, I read where one homosexual advocate dared to call him

VILE

Now, I thought that was ironic. Here we had a Christian using the word "logical" and correctly describing the correct function of body parts in the clinical way a doctor would--no emotion, not hate--and then the person who actually does exhibit every single characteristic of the very definition of VILEness comments on how VILE the Christian is!

Definition of VILE: foul, nasty, unpleasant, bad, disagreeable, horrid, horrible, dreadful, abominable, atrocious, offensive, obnoxious, odious, unsavory, repulsive, DISGUSTING, distasteful, loathsome, HATEFUL, nauseating, sickening.... (from a Google search)

What's that verse of the Bible that warns us about a time when they will call Good Bad, and Bad Good?

11 posted on 12/20/2013 6:16:30 AM PST by sauron ("Truth is hate to those who hate Truth" --unknown)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 7 | View Replies]

To: SC_Pete

SC_Pete: “Phil should never have granted the interview with GQ in the first place. It was an obvious setup. Conservatives must recognize hat the liberal media is part of the enemy.”

I disagree. Phil’s interview is EXACTLY what those of us on the right need to do. Rather than surrendering the public sphere to the homosexuals and their supporters, we need to boldly express the truth. Homosexuality is immoral and unnatural.

Christians are also directed (by scripture) to always be ready to boldly stand up for the faith. How in the world will a homosexual offender ever be saved if he never has an opportunity to hear the truth?

Phil Robertson’s comments are probably shocking to some, because the left has largely succeeded in suppressing Christian truth. “Don’t call homosexuality a sin. You’ll hurt a homosexual’s feelings.”

I bet most people a decade or two ago correctly believed homosexuality was wrong. Far too many people today, on the other hand, really believe the hogwash that homosexuality is normal and OK, because that’s what they keep hearing from the media, schools, government, and sadly, many mainstream “Christian” denominations.


12 posted on 12/20/2013 7:06:17 AM PST by CitizenUSA (Democrats. The only constitutional rights they believe in are sodomy and abortion.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 10 | View Replies]

To: CitizenUSA

I agree with you on speaking boldly. I was questioning the venue. When conservatives try to communicate through liberal media, they are willfully misquoted, demeaned, mocked and slandered. The media deliberately misquotes, talks over, and twists their words around. The editing itself can make them look bad. To me it’s similar to CNN conducting the Presidential debates. When they use LIBERAL language to pose the question, the actually FRAME the discussion on their grounds.

Conservatives need to use conservative outlets. But if they do subject themselves to a liberal outlet—they had better be prepared.


13 posted on 12/20/2013 11:37:12 AM PST by SC_Pete
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 12 | View Replies]

To: SC_Pete

That’s why we enjoyed Newt in the debates so much

“I reject the premise of your question”

needs to be stated more often.


14 posted on 12/20/2013 11:38:39 AM PST by MrB (The difference between a Humanist and a Satanist - the latter admits whom he's working for)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 13 | View Replies]

To: MrB

“I reject the premise of your question.”
“You are assuming that....”
“Your main assumption is that...”
“You are asking the wrong question...”
“Let’s pose the question differently...”
“Capitlism really isn’t the right term. I prefer free markets or the free enterprise system....”

Ted Cruz does that too. But he is a Princeton debate champion. He knows how to rhetorically destroy an opponent by undercutting the opposition’s premises. I can’t wait to see him debate Hillary!


15 posted on 12/20/2013 11:59:43 AM PST by SC_Pete
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 14 | View Replies]

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson