It's Over: Duck Dynasty to End Bigoted Run

It’s all over but the quacking: Duck Dynasty, the A&E reality show that followed the lives of the homophobic and transphobic Robertson family and their duck call business, will end its run next year.

The family made the announcement in a video that accompanied the season premiere Wednesday, The New York Times reports. “We’ve decided as a family for this to be the final chapter of the Duck Dynasty series,” said Jase Robertson, one of patriarch Phil’s sons. The final season, the 11th, will run in two parts: the first with episodes airing weekly now through January 18, the second running from March 1 through April 12. The family hinted that they might appear in some specials.

The series about the West Monroe, La., family began airing in 2012, and Phil Robertson was briefly suspended in December 2013 after the publication of a GQ interview in which he called homosexuality a sin on par with bestiality and terrorism, and said he never saw blacks being mistreated in the South before the civil rights movement.

“Start with homosexual behavior and just morph out from there,” he said. “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.” But Jesus can save gays, drunks, and terrorists, he said — of course, only if they change their behavior.

He was soon back on the show, though, and he and other members of the family continued to spew anti-LGBT venom. Early in 2014, son Willie Robertson told a CNN interviewer he believes in a literal reading of the Bible, so therefore being gay is a sin and unrepentant gays will spend eternity in hell. Willie Robertson appeared at the Republican National Convention this year in support of Donald Trump’s presidential candidacy, and Fox News has hired him as a contributor.

His father supported Ted Cruz in the Republican presidential primaries but came over to Trump after the latter won the nomination. Phil Robertson appeared at a Cruz rally in January, calling marriage equality “evil.” Then over the summer, speaking at a right-wing conference, he blamed the Supreme Court’s marriage equality ruling and recent advances in transgender rights for the thousands of murders in the United States and the deaths of American soldiers overseas. He also delivered a transphobic video rant on behalf of the conservative organization Citizens United, urging support for legislation that would restrict transgender people’s restroom access.

Duck Dynasty’s ratings peaked in 2013 and dropped off severely the following year, the Los Angeles Times reports. Rumors of the show’s cancellation began circulating early in 2015. The Robertsons will undoubtedly continue to spout anti-LGBT rhetoric — but at least now they’re losing one prominent platform.