Fox News host Bill O’Reilly on Thursday broke with a number of conservatives who rushed to defend the star of A&E’s “Duck Dynasty” after the network suspended him for making inflammatory anti-gay comments.
O’Reilly said he wasn’t surprised, and A&E shouldn’t be surprised, by the Robertson clan’s brand of fundamental Christianity. But the Fox News host said Phil Robertson made a “mistake” in his “condemnation line.”
“Start with homosexual behavior and just morph out from there,” Robertson told GQ Magazine on the subject of sin. “Bestiality, sleeping around with this woman and that woman and that woman and those men. 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.”
Suggesting that gays wouldn’t be admitted to “the kingdom of heaven,” O’Reilly said, was where Robertson went too far.
“It’s not about the Bible, or believing or not believing in the Bible,” O’Reilly argued. “It’s singling out a group, could be any group, and saying to that group ‘Hey, you’re not worthy. You’re not worthy in the eyes of the Lord, or in the eyes of God, you’re not worthy because of who you are.’ So once you get that personal, once you get down into that kind of a realm, problems arise.”
Watch the segment over at Mediaite.
