Guns and Gays and Hypocrisy, Oh My!

Phil Robertson and Dick Metcalf were both fired for expressing their views. Only one inspired outrage.

This is a tale of two men. Both men had TV shows, both men expressed their opinions. Both men’s employers cut ties with them. But only one inspired outrage for being discriminated against for speaking out.

By now, everyone has heard about Duck Dynasty patriarch Phil Robertson. He said some rather hateful things about homosexuals and African-Americans, which prompted the A&E Network to place him on “indefinite hiatus”. This prompted an immediate backlash from conservatives who were apoplectic that Robertson’s First Amendment rights were somehow being violated. This story dominated the news cycle and even launched petitions such as IStandWithPhil.com that argued:

“…the notion that a free-thinking American should be discriminated against simply for expressing a perspective that is in conflict with another is patently un-American and flies in the face of true tolerance and civility.”

In a parallel universe, Dick Metcalf had a similar experience. Metcalf is one of the country’s pre-eminent gun journalists. He was a columnist for Guns & Ammo, and had a TV show on the Sportsman channel called Modern Rifle Adventures. This is a guy with some serious NRA credibility.

However, in late October, Metcalf penned a column titled “Let’s Talk Limits”. In the column he stated, “The fact is, all constitutional rights are regulated, always have been, and need to be.” The column doesn’t advocate for much beyond proper training for anyone having a gun. Still, the column inspired the ire of gun manufacturers who primarily sponsor both the magazine and the TV show on which Metcalf appears. The gun companies threatened his employer that Metcalf needed to be fired or they would take their money elsewhere. And so Metcalf was let go.

So the question is, where is the outrage? Why is there no IStandWithDick.com petitioning for the return of this gun enthusiast? After all, the issue with Robertson was that his right to express his opinion was being stifled… right?

The similarity of these cases, down to both victims being conservative icons of sorts, leaves only one interpretation for the relative silence from the political right over Metcalf’s dismissal. This wasn’t ever about freedom of expression. This was about support for a position. Those rallying for Robertson’s return were behind him because he expressed views about gays and blacks that resonated with them. They supported those positions, but lacked Robertson’s “courage” to say them aloud. Metcalf got no support because he was advocating a position that was anathema to that same group.

This was never about freedom of a man’s speech. It was always about support for a man’s views. I’m all for everyone getting to express their views directly, or indirectly by expressing support for others’ views, but can we at least be honest about our motivations? I have respect for anyone with the courage to stand by their convictions. But it’s simply cowardly to hide your true convictions behind other espoused ideologies you think are more socially acceptable.

Atheism, homosexuality, and other reasons your neighbors look at you funny

June is LGBT Pride Month, and what better way to celebrate than to talk about how much easier it is to be gay now than to be an atheist. Would my parents feel better if I was gay instead of atheist? That’s not at all clear. (But I’m pretty sure my fiancé prefers the latter.)

Ronald Lindsay’s essay does make the accurate point that the LGBT movement is farther up the acceptance curve than atheists are. Sure, gays are only despised in many areas of the country, while atheists are a scourge throughout it.

Yet it’s pretty clear that equal rights and social equality for gays and lesbians is inevitable, even if they must first wait for all the Baby Boomers to die. I think atheists will get there too, but that may take an additional generation. Repeated studies have indicated that a Muslim Hispanic lesbian high school dropout with a kitten drowning fetish would be elected to the Oval Office long before anyone entrusts the nuclear codes to an Ivy League educated white male golf-playing baby-eating atheist.

Clearly, there are parallels between the groups, much as any of these freedom movements have parallels, but they are not the same. One of Lindsay’s points of difference is that atheists, unlike homosexuals, make a choice. I’m not so sure.

It wasn’t that long ago that the conventional wisdom was that homosexuality was a choice. Genetic studies and other scientific evidence have since dispelled that myth. I strongly believe that gays being born that way has contributed more than a little to their societal acceptance.

If you talk to a few gay people it becomes pretty clear there was no point in their life when they decided to be gay. However, most do have a point where they stopped pretending to be heterosexual. Those are not remotely the same things.

Science has yet to nail down a “god gene”, but there is work going on that does at least suggest a genetic origin for predisposition toward the spiritual. I think discovery of such a DNA based origin for faith or the lack of it would go a long way toward making atheists less threatening. However, I won’t be able to stop snickering at the delicious irony if it turns out religion was an evolutionary trait along.

I know for me personally, I could not choose to be religious. My brain is simply not wired that way. I could choose to act religious, but that’s not the same thing. Especially in this country, the bar for appearing Christian is quite low in most communities. Simply don’t talk about religion, wish everyone a Merry Christmas, and show up to church every Easter. That clearly doesn’t make you religious, but you’d pass as a default Christian in the average American town.

This may be the real key difference between gays and atheists in society. Homosexuals are not asexual. If they were, they would have no desire for romantic attachment. As an asexual, it would be fairly easy to just keep your mouth shut and let everyone assume you were single and straight—much like the closeted atheist.

But homosexuals do have desires. They want to be in relationships, have families and all that social-centric stuff. In religion terms, being gay is more like being Hindu than atheist. They want to practice, just differently. It’s definitely easier to just decline to play rather than want to play, but by different rules.

So, I think it is harder being gay in society than atheist. And I think the ease of ignoring or hiding one’s atheism is also why getting atheists to come out of the closet will always be more problematic. Hence,the reason the movement toward atheist’s rights will progress slowly… glacially even. We’ll get there, but probably not in my lifetime.

My mother always said I could grow up to be President. It turns out that’s not so true.