If I hear one more conservative complain that the A&E Network violated Duck Dynasty star Phil Robertson’s free speech rights by suspending him from the show, I’m going to scream.
Here’s a primer for conservatives who seem to have dedicated themselves to being experts on the Second Amendment while abdicating the First to liberals: Freedom of speech means that the government can’t stop you from saying what you want, or force you to support what you don’t believe. It doesn’t mean you can avoid the consequences of people’s responses to your speech. It doesn’t prohibit others from choosing not to support you and removing your forum for your views.
Conservatives have been leaping in front of bullets to defend Robertson’s First Amendment rights. What about A&E’s First Amendment rights?
In an interview with GQ magazine, Robertson declared that homosexuals, drunks, fornicators, terrorists and people who commit bestiality won’t make it to heaven. In a 2010 speech, he thundered that gays are “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.” Following the GQ interview, A&E announced that they would no longer bankroll Robertson’s cable TV stardom anymore — though that decision seems to have been reversed.
The way some Christian groups reacted to Robertson’s suspension, you’d think A&E had successfully lobbied the President to sign an executive order mandating that adherents of the country’s largest and most powerful religion communicate only via duck whistle.
The Duck Dynasty brouhaha isn’t about “tolerance,” as Robertson supporters claim. Pro-Robertson conservatives aren’t particularly tolerant of A&E’s right to express its views by declining to pay Robertson millions of dollars and ceasing to give him airtime on the network.
In National Review, Mark Steyn complained, “The forces of ‘tolerance’ are intolerant of anything less than full-blown celebratory approval.” I don’t know, being upset that Robertson compared individuals in committed, decades-long relationships with people who fly passenger jets into skyscrapers doesn’t constituent demanding “full-blown celebratory approval.” I think most same-sex marriage supporters would settle for “grudging acceptance of the law.”
You could just as easily say Steyn is intolerant of “anything less than full-blown celebratory approval” of Christianity and gay marriage opposition. Why does Steyn’s stance get to be the default position and support for gay marriage the upstart one?
In a series of hysterical exaggerations, Steyn compared A&E’s business decision to Muslims in London bullying shopkeepers into not selling alcohol, chess players in the former Soviet Union politicizing the game and French Revolutionaries hanging dissidents to set an example. How are any of these situations analogous to A&E’s private business decision?
Conservatives rightly denounce the moral relativist stance of “non-judgmentalism.” Why don’t they condone letting us judge whether Robertson’s comments about gays and blacks were reasonable in this day and age?
