See What Liam Payne Just Said About 'Duck Dynasty'

Look, I know being a member of a hugely popular boy band is probably a genuinely weird, epically disorienting life to lead. But we can all agree that's not an excuse for everything, right? Like, Justin Bieber's life is a markedly strange one, one that might be cause for concern, but that doesn't make it any less gauche when he goes and says he wishes Anne Frank were alive to be a fan of his. The same goes for this newest thing, wherein One Direction's Liam Payne defends Duck Dynasty and their "family values."

For those who haven't been following along, Duck Dynasty made news rather recently for their patriarch Phil Robertson's anti-gay remarks. There was a big kerfluffle, A&E suspended him and then took the suspension back after enough of a backlash from conservative viewers who lauded the Robertsons for their "family values," etc.. It was all quite messy, and quite bothersome, and quite telling.

What it boils down to is this: The Duck Dynasty family revealed themselves to be the type of people who use their bibles as an excuse to hurl bigotry. And now, in a tweet sent out today, Liam Payne has come out in support of them. Here's the tweet he sent to Willie Robertson:

I've embedded it in photographic form just in case it gets deleted, but the link to the tweet itself is here.

It'd be really great if we could, just as one big group, agree to stop using the phrase "family values" to excuse the exclusion and/or oppression and/or just general bullying of an entire rather sizable group of people. It'd also be really great if Payne here realized how much of his fanbase belongs to the very group the Robertsons want nothing to do with.

Update #1: C'mon, Payne, take a cue from your bandmate's response to y'all being picketed by the Westboro Baptist Church:

Update #2: Liam now seems to be responding to people's immediate engative response to his words:

(It's ruining twitter for us, too, Liam)

Image: Twitter, Tumblr