LGBT Women's News: Confusion Between 'Diverse Opinions' and 'Oppressive Characterizations'

Warren J. Blumenfeld
College of Education, University of Massachusetts Amherst

"Why do Leftists have such a hard time with the concept of Free Speech? They are so intolerant of those who disagree with them and seem to always want to censor ideas they do not like... I thought Leftists or at Liberals claimed to love Diversity. How about showing it?"("What the Duck: Justice or Lost Opportunity")

This respondent's reply to my recent Huffington Post editorial blog on the controversy swirling around Phil Robertson, the patriarch on A&E's popular show Duck Dynasty, reflects larger questions on issues of free speech, multiculturalism, dominant group privilege, and oppression.

In my editorial, I challenged Roberson's comments in a GQ interview focusing on homosexuality, "race" relations, and socioeconomic class:

On the topic of homosexuality, Robertson quipped that 'It seems like, to me, a vagina -- as a man -- would be more desirable than a man's anus,' and he proclaimed that same-sex sexuality leads to promiscuity with multiple male and female partners, while likening it to bestiality. He concluded by paraphrasing 1 Corinthians 6-9 from the Christian testaments: '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.' Three years prior to his GQ interview, Phil Robertsonasserted as a guest speaker at the Berean Bible Church in Pottstown, Pennsylvania: "Women with women, men with men, they committed indecent acts with one another and they received in themselves the due penancey 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."

On race relations and socioeconomic class: During his youth growing up in the Jim Crow South, Robertson talked about the "singing and happy" black people whom he worked alongside hoeing and picking cotton since, as Roberson phrased it, he himself was "white trash." "I never, with my eyes, saw the mistreatment of any black person. Not once." Then taking aim at current safety-net programs, he asserted: "Pre-entitlement, pre-welfare, you say: Were they happy? They were godly; they were happy; no one was singing the blues."

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