“Duck Dynasty” star Phil Robertson not only has refused to back down from his highly-inflammatory and homophobic statements, he actually expounded on them, telling a church congregation on Sunday that he “will not give or back off from my path.”
Robertson, 67, whipped up a storm of controversy when he told a GQ magazine writer that “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?”
Robertson revealed that he was ambushed by the level and intensity of the backlash over his comments, telling his Bible study group at West Monroe, La.’s White’s Ferry Road Church, he “didn’t think much of [his comments] at all, but it seems a lot of other people did.”
Robertson classifies homosexuality as a sin — along with adultery and lying — and readily admits his own past transgressions without same.
“I have been immoral, drunk, high,” he told those in his bible study group. “I ran with the wicked people for 28 years and I have run with the Jesus people since and the contrast is astounding.”
He later said, “Jesus will take sins away, if you’re a homosexual he’ll take it away, if you’re an adulterer, if you’re a liar, what’s the difference? If you break one sin you may as well break them all.
“Sexual sins are numerous and many, I have a few myself, he says,” he said, according to the British Daily Mail. “So what is your safest course of action? If you’re a man, find yourself a woman, marry them and keep your sex right there … common sense says we are not going to procreate the human race unless we have a man and a woman. From the beginning Jesus said, ‘It is a man and a woman.’
“Adam was made and Eve was made for this reason. They left their fathers and mothers and be united to become one flesh, that’s what marriage is all about.”
As you recall, A&E immediately imposed sanctions on the “Duck Dynasty” patriarch, suspending him indefinitely from the enormously popular reality show about backwoods rednecks. Not surprisingly, the family has taken a defiant stand behind their father, saying they refuse to film a single episode without him.
Sources told Entertainment Weekly that A&E plans to weather the current storm and continue to keep the wildly-popular Robertson family in their employ.
“The network also hopes the media and fan furor will cool down over the holidays and that tensions over shooting future episodes can then be resolved,” the source said. “There’s no negotiation to have; we’re doing the show.”
