Pajama Boy and Duck Dynasty

Evidently, this is the Obama administration's image of millenials - androgynous metrosexuals sitting around their parents' Manhattan apartments in their plaid pajamas sipping hot chocolate and looking mildly cynical and bemused?

I'm not making fun of the young man who posed for the picture, but rather of the liberal idealization of the typical American under thirty. Even the liberals at Morning Joe have trouble containing their mirth at the notion that an ad putatively designed to persuade young Americans to sign up for health insurance would try to have them identify with a guy who looks like he just walked off the set of Big Bang Theory wearing his "onesie" zip-up jammies and nursing a latte:

Maybe if the administration wants to reach the vast number of Americans with their message they should enlist these guys, even though the suggestion would probably make many of them blanch.

Speaking of Duck Dynasty, which I guess we now are, it's a sad thing that someone can be asked his opinion of homosexuality in a magazine interview and be censured and essentially fired by his employer for saying that he thinks it's a sin. This was, and I would argue still is, the mainstream opinion throughout most of the world for the last six thousand years. Why is it now deemed an unspeakably reprehensible view?

It's ironic, I think, that Phil Robertson (at the left in the photo above) was suspended by A&E for giving an opinion in response to an interviewer's question that differs probably not at all from that held by the man just named Time magazine's "Person of the Year"?

I heard a guest on a radio show this morning say that he thought what Robertson said was "vile hate speech" because Robertson equated homosexuality with raping animals (bestiality). This is absurd. Here's what Robertson said:

Robertson described in the interview how sin is becoming acceptable in America and that the country needs to turn back to its Christian values.

“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,” Robertson told GQ. “Don’t be deceived. Neither the adulterers, the idolaters, the male prostitutes, the homosexual offenders, the greedy, the drunkards, the slanderers, the swindlers—they won’t inherit the kingdom of God. Don’t deceive yourself. It’s not right.”

Despite his beliefs, the Duck Commander founder says he doesn’t judge others.

“We never, ever judge someone on who’s going to heaven, hell. That’s the Almighty’s job,” Robertson told GQ. “We just love ‘em, give ‘em the good news about Jesus – whether they’re homosexuals, drunks, terrorists. We let God sort ‘em out later.”

Robertson is saying, it should hardly need pointing out, that homosexuality is a sin in Christian (and Jewish and Muslim) theology, just like adultery and worse forms of sexual transgression are sins. It's simply irrational to conclude, as Robertson's critics have, that because he says homosexuality is a sin and bestiality is a sin that therefore homosexuality is the same thing as bestiality. That'd be like saying that because lying is a sin and murder is a sin, therefore lying is the same thing as murder.

No matter. When the left sees a chance to punish someone for their religious beliefs, especially if the beliefs are evangelical Christian, they're not going to let a little thing like logic, or giving the guy the benefit of the doubt, stand in their way.

I've only ever watched Duck Dynasty once, and I don't call myself a fan, but I hope the Robertson clan leaves A&E and takes their sponsors and eleven million viewers with them. It'd be a condign outcome for the bigots in the A&E front office, who only had to issue a disclaimer if they wanted to dissociate the network from Robertson's views. To suspend him for honestly answering the question put to him by the GQ interviewer is to implicitly announce that traditional Christian belief is unacceptable and will not be tolerated on their network.