It’s tough to type the phrase “2015 Conservative Political Action Conference” without going full snark in the very next sentence, but for once I have to applaud the organizers. Nobody deserves the “Andrew Breitbart Defender of the First Amendment Award” more than Phil Robertson, the gay-bashing, Jesus-loving, squirrel-hunting star of A&E’s Duck Dynasty.
Can any of us deny that Robertson, who lives the hardscrabble outdoorsman life that Beltway Republicans glamorize without understanding in the slightest, has spoken his mind at every turn, regardless of the consequences or his own ignorance on the subject at hand? We cannot.
From his infamous 2013 interview with GQ:
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.
From that same interview, on the subject of the south under Jim Crow:
I never, with my eyes, saw the mistreatment of any black person.
Same interview, on health care:
Temporary is all you’re going to get with any kind of health care, except the health care I’m telling you about. That’s eternal health care, and it’s free … I’ve opted to go with eternal health care instead of blowing money on these insurance schemes.
And again:
It seems like, to me, a vagina—as a man—would be more desirable than a man’s anus.
One more:
Genesis 9 is where the animals went wild, and God gave them wildness. After the flood,that’s when he made animals wild. Up until that time, everybody was vegetarian.
In a Good Morning America appearance to promote his book:
I’m as much of a homophobe as Jesus was. People who are participating in homosexual behavior, they need to know that I love them.
Chatting with Sean Hannity on Fox News:
Worldwide, planet-wide, Biblically speaking, two groups of people, the children of God, and the whole world is under the control of the evil one.
Again to Hannity:
There is a Satan out there, an evil one, and if anyone that looks at our culture doesn’t believe it, I would simply say, what, are you blind?
In a Parade interview:
If your woman picks your ducks, and she cooks and carries her Bible … now there’s the complete package of womanhood.
From Duck Dynasty:
The more makeup a woman wears, the more she’s trying to hide. Make up can hide a lot of evil.
Duck Dynasty again:
Jason Bourne: He’s kind of a cross between MacGyver and James Bond. He’s got every kind of jujitsu known to man. He’s able to live off the things he finds in the woods—he’s my kind of man. Jason Bourne: The Ultimate Redneck. He’s kind of like the son you never had.
Duck Dynasty, still:
I want my grandkids to grow up in the great outdoors. The last thing I want is for them to grow up to be nerds.
From a church sermon in West Monroe, La.:
Biblically correct sex is safe. It’s safe. You’re not going to get chlamydia, gonorrhea, syphilis, AIDS—if you, if a man marries a woman, and neither of you have it, and you keep your sex between the two of you, you’re not going to get ever sexually transmitted diseases. … Why is there so many terrible, debilitating diseases? Because they just say, “We’re gonna follow our orthodox liberal opinion, just breed anything and anybody. Just have at it. Go for it.”
Another sermon, in 2010, in Pennsylvania:
Women with women, men with men, they committed indecent acts with one another, and they received in themselves the due penalty for their perversions. They’re 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. That’s what you have 235 years, roughly, after your forefathers founded the country. So what are you gonna do Pennsylvania? Just run with them? You’re doing to die. Don’t forget that.
In another sermon, 2009, on marriageable women:
They got to where they’re getting hard to find, mainly because these boys are waiting till they get to be about 20 years old before they marry them. Look, you wait till they get to be 20 years old, the only picking that’s going to take place is your pocket. You got to marry these girls when they are about 15 or 16. They’ll pick your ducks.
Here’s to the “unphiltered” wisdom of the backwoods bayou—the exact unpopular opinions our rich, aristocratic founding fathers sought to defend. Seriously!
H/T Talking Points Memo | Photo via A&E
