Duck Dynasty could very well be done.

Sources connected to the hit A&E show, and the Robertson clan, tell E! News that the family is “very serious” about leaving the reality series, after the network suspended patriarch Phil Robertson for his GQ interview, in which he grouped homosexuality in with bestiality as deviant behavior.

“They’re an extremely tight-knit family and they’re not going to let this get in the way,” a source connected to the family explains. “[Phil] is the reason for their success—they’re not going to abandon him. They’re also not about to let anyone threaten their religious beliefs.”

Now, I don’t agree with Robertson’s take on homosexuality. Heck, I don’t even like duck hunting. But I also don’t care. What I object to is the insinuation that I have to.

And what I find absolutely ridiculous is the feigned shock that an avatar of the redneck renaissance might actually have politically incorrect or just plain religiously orthodox views on homosexuality. Seriously, who called for the fainting couch when they read his interview in GQ?

Duck Dynasty has been a huge ratings success, receiving fawning coverage from the elite media. Much of the coverage has also been incredibly condescending, like aristocrats in Victorian London having a grand time inviting a Zulu tribesman to dinner. Everyone says, “Look at the funny rednecks,” until Robertson says something that you would absolutely expect to hear from a guy who plays a redneck on TV. Then suddenly everyone is scandalized? Please. Isn’t the whole point of these shows to demonstrate that there are lots of different kinds of people out there? Isn’t that a good thing?

But no matter how nice you are, it’s never enough. Duck Dynasty’s Phil Robertson, in his career-detonating interview with GQ, gave a rather thoughtful vernacular exegesis of the Bible’s line on sin, while carefully insisting that he and other Christians are obligated to love all sinners and leave it to the Almighty to adjudicate the competing charms of drunkards, fornicators, and homosexuals. Nevertheless, GLAAD — “the gatekeepers of politically correct gayness” as the (gay) novelist Bret Easton Ellis sneered — saw their opportunity and seized it. By taking out TV’s leading cable star, they would teach an important lesson pour encourager les autres — that espousing conventional Christian morality, even off-air, is incompatible with American celebrity.

Some of my comrades, who really should know better, wonder why, instead of insisting Robertson be defenestrated, GLAAD wouldn’t rather “start a conversation.” But, if you don’t need to, why bother? Most Christian opponents of gay marriage oppose gay marriage; they don’t oppose the right of gays to advocate it. Yet thug groups like GLAAD increasingly oppose the right of Christians even to argue their corner. It’s quicker and more effective to silence them.

As Christian bakers ordered to provide wedding cakes for gay nuptials and many others well understand, America’s much-vaunted “freedom of religion” is dwindling down to something you can exercise behind closed doors in the privacy of your own abode or at a specialist venue for those of such tastes for an hour or so on Sunday morning, but when you enter the public square you have to leave your faith back home hanging in the closet. Yet even this reductive consolation is not permitted to Robertson: GLAAD spokesgay Wilson Cruz declared that “Phil and his family claim to be Christian, but Phil’s lies about an entire community fly in the face of what true Christians believe.” Robertson was quoting the New Testament, but hey, what do those guys know? In today’s America, land of the Obamacare Pajama Boy, Jesus is basically Nightshirt Boy, a fey non-judgmental dweeb who’s cool with whatever. What GLAAD is attempting would be called, were it applied to any other identity group, “cultural appropriation.”

In the broader sense, it’s totalitarian.

In the 1960s, radical philosopher Herbert Marcuse popularized the “repressive tolerance” theory of modern progressives. “Liberating tolerance would mean intolerance against movements from the right and toleration of movements from the left,” Marcuse pontificated. “Certain things cannot be said, certain ideas cannot be expressed, certain policies cannot be proposed.”

The tolerance mob’s insatiable quest for power and control has led to such unhinged witch-hunting that many of its own erstwhile allies are balking. Novelist Bret Easton Ellis called GLAAD the “gatekeepers of politically correct gayness.” He was attacked as a “self-loathing gay man,” but unlike A&E, he didn’t give in. “An organization holding an awards ceremony that they think represents all gays and also feels they can choose which gays can and cannot be a member of the party is, on the face of it, ridiculous.”…

GLAAD’s counterculture warriors know full well: It’s a small leap from forcing Phil Robertson, the Boy Scouts and Rush Limbaugh out of the public square to forcing wedding photographers and cake bakers to serve gay customers against their will and mandating that Catholic medical providers and Hobby Lobby violate their religious conscience and cover abortion pills in order to stay in business.

A&E has the right to its decision, but suspending Phil for his beliefs, even if expressed crudely, seems ungracious. The Robertsons’ Christian values are, in large part, exactly why the show is so popular. Millions of viewers have made it the top reality show of all time because they reject the moral bankruptcy of other reality families. Indeed, the Robertsons’ Christianity has been very profitable for A&E.

The outrage over Phil’s intolerance also seems blindly hypocritical. Many of his most indignant critics, including prominent voices in the media, are the very same people who are overtly intolerant and dismissive of Christians, regularly condemning them as idiots, fanatics and loons.

A colleague of mine — someone I like very much — once said that parents who taught their children the creation story should be charged with child abuse. Another colleague of mine likened a Christian community in Florida to Jonestown. I’ve heard many others openly wish that anti-abortion Christians had been aborted. This is the kind of tolerance to which Phil Robertson should aspire?

This is what happened. The whole idea of the show was to parade these nouveau riche Christian hillbillies around so that we could laugh at them. “Look at them,” we were supposed to say. “Look how backward they are! Look what they believe! Can you believe they really live this way and believe this stuff? See how they don’t fit in? HAHAHA”

When the producers saw the way the show was shaping up, different than they envisioned it, they tried to change course. They tried to get the Robertson’s to tone down their Christianity, but to their eternal credit they refused. They tried to add fake cussin’ to the show by inserting bleeps where no cussword was uttered. At best, they wanted to make the Robertson’s look like crass buffoons. At worst they wanted them to look like hypocrites.

They desperately wanted us to laugh at the Robertsons. Instead, we loved them…

And then we pointed at them. We pointed at them and said things like, “I wish my family was more like them. I wish we prayed together as a family. I wish we were together like the Robertsons.”

“Look, I wouldn’t have certainly said it the way he said it, that’s for darn sure,” Santorum remarked, without saying he disagrees with the sentiment behind Robertson’s statements. At the same time, Santorim said he didn’t believe GLAAD or A&E’s objections had anything to do with the “coarseness” of Robertson’s language.

“What he did was crude and coarse, no doubt about it,” Santorum continued, “but what they really object to was the fact that he quoted scripture and they didn’t like that and that’s what they are really objecting to.”

Via Gateway Pundit.