Washington Post columnist and frequent Fox News contributor Charles Krauthammer has praised the LGBTI community for ‘heroically’ fighting for their rights but says they should be more tolerant of people who don’t agree with the idea of same-sex marriage for religious reasons in the way they expect tolerance for themselves.

Krauthammer made the comments on 22 December on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace during a panel discussion, reacting to questions about Duck Dynasty patriarch Phil Robertson recent comments about homosexuality.

Krauthammer said the A&E network was within its rights to suspend Robertson from the show over his comments about gay people and African Americans and also for people to boycott the network, but also said it was wrong for the LGBTI community to paint people who oppose gay marriage for religious reasons as bigots when President Barack Obama had opposed it as recently as 2008 for that reason.

‘This is a dispute between a private party, a network making a lot of money off a private party, and it can decide if it thinks that person has gone over their line or not,’ Krauthammer said.

‘It’s a personal decision and it will be adjudicated in the end by whether the boycotters of the network are going to be stronger than the boycotters of the products that – of those who are opposing it.

‘I do think there is one irony here – which is, the gays who have heroically fought for equality in the marketplace, in housing, in the military, in marriage, and as for tolerance and acceptance, having achieved it or largely achieved it, ought to think about [if it’s right to be] using their influence and power to delegitimatize and to be ill-tolerant towards others, who still think as was pointed out by Governor Huckabee, the same way Obama did in 2008.

‘It can’t be that illegitimate if the president himself, whom all of us would say is not a bigot, had those biblical approaches in 2008.’