Regarding The Beard, The Bible, and The First Amendment

Last updated on: December 19, 2013 at 11:56 am by Amy Courts

Regarding The Beard, The Bible, and The First Amendment 2013-12-19T11:56:34+00:00 Amy Courts

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“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…”

“It seems like, to me, a vagina—as a man—would be more desirable than a man’s anus. That’s just me. I’m just thinking: There’s more there! She’s got more to offer. I mean, come on, dudes! You know what I’m saying? But hey, sin: It’s not logical, my man. It’s just not logical.”

“I never, with my eyes, saw the mistreatment of any black person. Not once. Where we lived was all farmers. The blacks worked for the farmers. I hoed cotton with them. I’m with the blacks, because we’re white trash. We’re going across the field…. They’re singing and happy. I never heard one of them, one black person, say, ‘I tell you what: These doggone white people’—not a word!… Pre-entitlement, pre-welfare, you say: Were they happy? They were godly; they were happy; no one was singing the blues.”
– Phil Robertson, in GQ Magazine

Three things.

1) Dear LGBTQ Friends of mine. You are not less-than. I don’t think you are going to burn in hell for having a different sexual preference than I, but if you are, I’ll probably be there too for being a gossip and slanderer and pretty much all those other things listed. You are loved. You are image bearers. You are worth Jesus’ death. You are my friends. And I, along with many other people, know that it’s both totally ridiculous and downright offensive to compare who you are to bestiality. You deserve better than that disturbing commentary. You deserve that little word to get lost and buried under the weight of words that describe how loved and cherished you are. You deserve to know that not all Christians care more about defending a reality star’s opinion than they do of hurting you.

2) Dear Black Friends: You were not “just fine” back in the Jim Crow days, you were not godlier and happier and more content, and the Civil Rights for which so many of you gave and are still giving your lives are not welfare. They are rights. You are beautiful, you are image bearers, and it makes me sick that this battle is still raging; more so that Christians are defending those who say your human rights are handouts to a presumably lesser race. You are not lesser. You are better than us, because you are survivors, and you continue to be gracious and forgiving to us, even as so many still struggle to wrap their heads around the concepts of “neither Jew nor gentile, slave nor free, male nor female, but all are in Christ.”

3) Dear Everyone Still Going on About Free Speech Nonsense: First of all, when your company fires/puts you on leave for offensive comments made publicly while representing them, your free speech hasn’t been squelched. Your company has simply decided that the best way to say “his views do not represent our company” is a public reprimand. Secondly, consider, for a moment, the many people on your friends lists who were deeply hurt by comments you’re staunchly defending. Remember that the people we spend our days with matter more than a celebrity we’ll never meet, and that the bridges we burn today will take a long time to rebuild. When we get busy defending obscene comments, we’re not defending free speech. We’re participating in the tearing down of our neighbors. There are ways to voice our opinions, even unpopular ones, without becoming offensive, vulgar, and condemning.

__________________________________________
for reference, this message has been brought to you by:
a) Phil Robertson’s controversial interview in GQ
&
b) his network’s decision to pull him from the show in response.

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