Duck Dynasty’s raggedy, curmudgeonly Phil Robertson has displayed a moral courage and boldness that should shame many (perhaps most) religious leaders in this country. And in so doing, he has won a huge victory for truth, religious liberty, and diversity. A&E has rescinded their arrogant, ignorant, and narrow-minded suspension of the family patriarch, Phil Robertson.

One of the many remarkable aspects of this brouhaha is the Left’s alleged indignation about Robertson’s crude language. His use of two anatomically correct terms to describe the preference most males have for normal intercourse gave “progressives” the vapors (Isn’t it the Left that believes it’s a moral imperative that preschoolers always use anatomically correct terms? No cute euphemisms for our two-year-olds. But heaven forfend that adults should use anatomically correct terms, especially when alluding to sodomy).

This prudery is remarkable from the crowd that worships at the altar of sexual deviance during annual public celebrations of homosexuality and cross-dressing and on many a family hour sitcom. Where were these paragons of linguistic virtue when a beloved homosexual character on Modern Family made a joke about “Sondheimizing” children?

I wonder if “progressives” got their undies in a twist over the title of the GQ Magazine interview that started this whole controversy: “What the Duck?” Oh, those clever wordsmiths at GQ.

Surely, this quote about the Louisiana backwater from the author of the GQ interview must be tormenting “progressive” language police:

I shouldn’t be sitting around the house and bitc**ng because the new iOS 7 touchscreen icons don’t have any f**king drop shadow. I should be out here, dam**t! Killing things and growing things and bringing dead things home to cook! There is a life out in this wilderness that I am too chickensh*t to lead. 

What really bedevils “progressives” is not the use of vulgar language. What really sticks in their craw is the audacity of anyone daring to suggest that the primary sexual act of homosexual men is deviant, perverse, abnormal, immoral, or a pathway to disease.

Another remarkable aspect of this incident is that “progressives” are so profoundly ignorant of theology and yet so unself-conscious about pontificating on matters of which they are so ignorant. Robertson’s main sin—according to the non-judgmental crowd—was his affirmation of the historical position of the church that homosexual acts are among the many sins that afflict humans. “Progressives” who know next to nothing about the Bible and exegesis think they’ve got orthodox Christians over a barrel when they—“progressives”—bring up Old Testament verses about eating shellfish or wearing mixed fabric clothing, or when they bring up verses about judging not or the absence of condemnation in Christ. A quick peak around the Internet would clarify the context and meaning of those passages and reveal to these exegetes the flaws in their manipulative use of Scripture.

But neither correct understanding nor obedience to Christ is their goal. Their goal is to compel deference to their self-serving desires by hook or by anti-biblical crook. Corrupting and exploiting Scripture is one of their tactics. The exploitation of the courts and government schools are two other means by which they seek to coerce compliance with their sexual ideology. And ad hominem attacks on any public figure who dares to express moral propositions with which they disagree is yet another.

The movement to normalize homosexuality is a pernicious movement. The end game is the eradication of the belief that homosexual acts are immoral. When that’s not possible, “progressives” seek to make it socially and politically impossible to express it. They will use vicious slander and outright lies (e.g., that homosexuality is analogous to race) to achieve their ends.

And still most churches remain silent, bending over backwards (which is easy for men without chests and spines) to prove that they don’t hate homosexuals. It should be shocking that pastors and priests say nothing while public money is used to affirm sin as righteousness to our little ones in our public schools. It would behoove church leaders who tsk-tsk Phil Robertson’s crude language to spend a little time thinking about their accommodation of the profound evil taking place in our schools. How are they exposing these deeds of darkness? How are they being salt and light? How are they protecting their flocks? Are they teaching the whole counsel of God?

In A&E’s statement, they emphasized that Robertson’s views “are not views we hold.”

So, do they reject Robertson’s belief that only God can judge who’s going to Heaven or Hell?

Do they reject Robertson’s belief that it’s our job as Christians to love our fellow sinners and tell them the good news about Jesus.

Do they reject Robertson’s common knowledge claim that that Nazis, Communists, and Muslims are not followers of Jesus Christ?

Do they reject the belief that “Neither the adulterers, the idolaters, the male prostitutes, the homosexual offenders, the greedy, the drunkards, the slanderers, the swindlers” will inherit the kingdom of God? Well, those were words paraphrased by Robertson, and they’re words that St. Paul wrote to the church in Corinthians shortly before he wrote what is known as the Love Chapter, widely read at all kinds of ceremonial occasions. Do the biblical scholars at A&E reject all of Corinthians or just the inconvenient parts?   

Perhaps they don’t hold the view that African Americans are “godly people,” because Robertson said that those he worked side by side with in the cotton fields were godly people.

Most important, Robertson said this in the interview: “If you simply put your faith in Jesus coming down in flesh, through a human being, God becoming flesh living on the earth, dying on the cross for the sins of the world, being buried, and being raised from the dead—yours and mine and everybody else’s problems will be solved.”

Sadly, the powers that be at A&E probably don’t hold this belief. 

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It’s nigh unto impossible to stop teachers from showing films with egregiously obscene language and depictions of sodomy, masturbation, and pedophilic fantasies in public schools, but when the gender/sexuality deconstructionists—aka “progressives”—want father-daughter dances gone, in the blink of a blinkered eye, they’re gone. When “progressives” in Cranston, Rhode Island said jump, school administrators said how high.

The administration of a school district in Cranston, Rhode Island, just a stone’s throw from the high school sued by the atheist teen over a banner on which was written a prayer that made her feel “unwanted,” was recently reprimanded for hosting its longstanding annual father-daughter dance because it supposedly violates the city’s anti-discrimination policy which prohibits discrimination based on gender in all school activities.

Although, the dance took place, the district apologized for this grievous offense to the sensibilities of sexuality anarchists.

Discrimination or Stereotyping: What’s the problem?

Even though the school agreed to offer an equivalent activity for boys (i.e., a mother-son baseball game), the gender deconstructionists at the ACLU were not satisfied. They sent a letter to the school which stated in part:

A dance for girls and a baseball game for boys, particularly in light of the stereotypes they embody, are not, we submit, ‘reasonably comparable’ activities….To the contrary; the stereotypes at their core undermine the goal of school anti-discrimination laws.

So, the goal of school anti-discrimination laws is to eradicate stereotypes? By stereotypes, the ACLU means any recognition that there are differences between boys and girls. I wonder what these stereotype-haters think of Will and Grace and Modern Family, which make their bread and butter by recognizing, promoting, and celebrating stereotypes of homosexuals. And since when is stereotype-eradication the proper role of any law?

This pernicious interpretation of anti-discrimination law points to the difference between legitimate and illegitimate discrimination. One meaning of discrimination is good. When we make judgments between right and wrong, we discriminate legitimately. When we make distinctions, that is to say, discriminate, between things that are by nature different, we discriminate legitimately. When we recognize, participate in, or promote types of activities or relationships in which gender or gender differences play a role, we are discriminating legitimately.

We ought not impose gender distinctions where they are irrelevant, but that doesn’t mean that society—including public schools—are prohibited from offering activities that recognize gender distinctions. It is ethically legitimate to have women’s book clubs, men’s golf outings, separate bathrooms for men and women, sexually complementary marriage, and father-daughter dances.

I guess the Rhode Island school could have provided a mother-son dance as the reasonably comparable activity for boys, which would have solved the problem of stereotyping. Or better yet, they could have offered a father-son dance, which would have really blown gender stereotypes to smithereens. But why is it inherently better to prohibit all formal recognition that there are differences between males and females than to occasionally recognize that most boys and most girls generally fit within these recognizable gender categories. What sense does it make for homosexual men to say they prefer men over women if there are no gender differences? With regard to dances, generally speaking, more young girls like to get gussied up and go to dances than do  young boys.

Anti-discrimination laws were never intended to obliterate public recognition of gender differences. Or at least the public was never told that the obliteration of all public recognition of gender differences was the ultimate goal of these laws.

Homosexuality and Gender Confusion Affirmed in Public Schools

Perhaps, however, it wasn’t the promotion of the evil stereotype that girls tend to like dances more than boys do that has the ACLU so incensed. Perhaps the ACLU’s concern is that those who are being raised by single or homosexual parents or who suffer from gender confusion will “feel bad” if there is any activity offered that doesn’t jibe with their circumstances. After all, it is their feelings and beliefs that now control public schools.

Public schools are pressured to accept as true the fanciful and subversive notion that one’s real gender is determined by one’s internal thoughts and desires. And public schools are pressured to affirm all family structures as equivalent in order not to make students who have only one parent or who are being raised by homosexuals “feel bad.”

This, of course, means public schools are not neutral on the issue of gender confusion, divorce, or families headed by homosexuals. Pretending that little boys are in reality little girls is not a neutral position. Affirming family structures that have only one parent or in which children are raised by homosexuals as equivalent to the traditional family structure in which there is a mother and father is a non-neutral position.

Suffering in Motherless or Fatherless Families

It is tragic that some children don’t have mothers or fathers. The reasons are many ranging from death to divorce and abandonment to the selfish desires of men and women who intentionally create motherless or fatherless children. But the unfortunate circumstances of some children should not preclude society from providing opportunities to celebrate the types of relationships that emerge from sexual differentiation.     

The Rhode Island story raises a number of questions:

• How can a society promote that which is good if it must continually defer to the feelings of those who either voluntarily make bad choices or who are victims of the bad choices of others?
• May society affirm the value of parents working to keep their family intact if doing so makes children whose parents divorce feel bad?
• Is the sadness of fatherless children caused by messages that affirm good things like the relationship between fathers and daughters? Or is the sadness caused by the absence of fathers?
• Does it help these children to conceal all celebrations of the good of father-daughter relationships?  

The fact that a student feels bad when exposed to an idea or activity does not mean that the idea should censored, or that the activity should be prohibited, or that either is wrong. Sometimes our sad (or guilty) feelings are good things. Sometimes they result from recognition that our own ideas and choices or the ideas and choices of people we love are not good. Sometimes our sorrow results from the absence of something good and desirable.

What is the origin of the opposition of gender deconstructionists to gender-related activities? Are they centrally concerned about the sadness children feel because their life circumstances are different from those of their peers? It could be that the ACLU believes that schools shouldn’t play any part—no matter how incidental, remote, or ancillary—in making kids feel bad because of differences in their life circumstances. If that’s the case, then schools must do away with honors nights because some kids can’t garner honors. And swim teams shouldn’t invite parents down on deck on senior night because some children don’t have parents. And health classes shouldn’t teach about the health risks of obesity because some kids have obese parents.

Or is their central concern their desire to eradicate any recognition of the objective status of gender differences and the critical role gender differences play in human flourishing? It could be that gender deconstructionists want to obliterate the objective truth that objective gender exists and that gender differences play an essential role in procreation and socialization. They may want to replace those truths with their radical, unproven beliefs that gender has no objectively discernible reality and plays no essential role in any activity or social experience.

If that’s the case and they win the cultural day, we’re in for a world of hurt. If we think schools are hurting children by holding an after-school, father-daughter dance, imagine a world where little girls and boys are taught that objectively discernible gender doesn’t exist and where all activities that recognize and celebrate gender differences are prohibited.

Father-daughter dances are not merely enjoyable activities for fathers and daughters (or grandpas and granddaughters, uncles and nieces, older brothers and little sisters). They also teach girls how men should treat women. In a small way, they help girls know the experience of being honored and cherished. And maybe in some small way that will help girls later in life reject those men who don’t honor and cherish them—or those who abuse them.

Public schools have no ethical obligation to affirm the non-objective belief that gender is constituted by feelings or thoughts, or that anatomy and DNA are wholly unrelated to gender. Public schools have no ethical obligation to affirm the peculiar assumptions of those who believe that gender has no objectively discernible and profoundly meaningful reality.

Public schools have no ethical obligation to try to alleviate all suffering, including the suffering that results from the poor choices of adults. Schools can’t lessen the pain that results from missing fathers or mothers. Schools can, however, make it more difficult for children to see the real source of their pain. Schools can also stand in the way of children growing up to aspire to something better. When schools teach implicitly and explicitly that fatherless or motherless families are just as beneficial for the rearing of children as stable families with one mother and one father who are married for life, they make it less likely that children will aspire to such family structures when they grow up. 

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Recently, homosexual humor during family hour reached a new low. On the ABC sitcom, Modern Family, one of the homosexual characters, Cam, directs a middle school musical. Here’s what he says:

This production was a joke until I introduced these children to the musical theater greats: Bernstein, Sondheim. Years from now some of these kids will still be talking about the way I sondheimized them.

In the twisted world of Hollywoood and homosexual activism, a play on the word sodomy is hilarious — particularly if it involves children.

For more on Hollywood’s worship of all things deviant, watch this short excerpt from the February’s Writers Guild Awards: