Many people are talking about the Phil Robertson interview in GQ, but the person whose comments seem silliest to me is Lousiana’s governor, Bobby Jindal. You would think that someone in government/politics woulds have a better awareness of what the US Constitution really covers. But not Jindal. Either he is clueless about the true meaning of the st amendment, or he cares more about playing politics and perpetrating lies and misinformation in an effort to solidify a fringe Far Right base.
Background: Phil Robertson did an interview with GQ where he made these provocative comments:
It seems like, to me, a vagina — as a man — would be more desirable than a man’s anus. That’s just me. I’m just thinking: There’s more there! She’s got more to offer. I mean, come on, dudes! You know what I’m saying? But hey, sin: It’s not logical, my man. It’s just not logical,
Start with homosexual behavior and just morph out from there. Bestiality, sleeping around with this woman and that woman and that woman and those men.”
He also made comments regarding race and growing up in Louisiana before the civil rights era.
“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!
A&R, the company that carries Robertson’s reality show, Duck Dynasty was not happy with him, and suspended the show.
This is a free country and everyone is entitled to express their views. In fact, I remember when TV networks believed in the First Amendment.
So what does the efforts of A&E, the television company which put Robertson on a permanent suspension have to do with the First Amendment?
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
So, take a look at these pieces, and see if you can determine how the First Amendment has anything to do with this at all. There is no element of this where Congress is involved in any way, shape of form. So why did he do this? Either he doesn’t know what the First Amendment actually says, doesn’t understand what it means or he is intentionally trying to perpetuate lies.
I think it is both. He doesn’t know what he is talking about, and he really doesn’t care, because he wants to demonize progressives. He wants to imply that those who seek to stop racial inequality and sexual orientation inequality are anti-freedom. In reality the anti-LGBT GOP, like Jindal were the ones who are really anti-freedom. Jindal’s efforts are intentional efforts to paint equality seekers as the enemy of the people- it is an effort to paint gays as the enemy who are taking something away from everyone else.