Writing in the Atlantic, Larry Alex Taunton does a nice job of noting the real conflict in the A&E/Duck Dynasty story. He writes:
Missing in the controversy over A&E’s handling of its golden
goose—or duck, rather—is the fact that the real conflict here is not
between Robertson and A&E; it is between gay activists and a solid
majority of Christians who believe homosexual acts are wrong. As
indicated above, Robertson’s views are hardly anomalous. Christians may
disagree on the details, but the Bible strongly condemns homosexuality
in both the Old and New Testaments; the marriage model of one man and
one woman is first given by God in Genesis 2 and reiterated by Jesus in
Matthew 19; and in Romans 1 the Apostle Paul denounces homosexuality as a
hallmark of a degenerate culture. The point here isn’t that you have to
believe any of this, but many Christians do believe it and feel morally
bound to believe it.
Instead of acknowledging this tension, however, A&E, GLAAD, and
their supporters have responded with disingenuous expressions of shock
and horror. And it matters that it's disingenuous, because if they
actually acknowledged that there is a genuine conflict between orthodox
Christianity and homosexual sex (along with several forms of
heterosexual sex) they would have to confront head-on the fact that
calling for a boycott or pressuring for Robertson's suspension tells
orthodox Christians that their religion is no longer acceptable, and
that’s not a very politically correct thing to do. Right now, they are
trying to weasel out of it by characterizing Robertson as a backwoods
bigot who takes his moral cues from Deliverance rather than from a straightforward reading of the Bible and the historic teachings of the Christian religion.
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