'Duck Dynasty's Phil Robertson stands by controversial comments

Dec. 25 (UPI) -- Phil Robertson may have ignited another round of the culture wars when his anti-gay comments in a GQ interview got him indefinitely suspended from his massively successful A&E series. But the Duck Dynasty patriarch isn't backing down from his views on homosexuality.

"I will not give or back off from my path," Robertson told his Bible study group on Sunday.

He called himself a "lover of humanity" and said that he once "ran with the wicked people" before finding Jesus.

‘We murder each other and we steal from one another, sex and immorality goes ballistic. All the diseases that just so happen to follow sexual mischief… boy there are some microbes running around now," he said.

‘Sexual sins are numerous and many, I have a few myself. So what is your safest course of action? If you’re a man, find yourself a woman, marry them and keep your sex right there. You can have fun, but one thing is for sure, as long as you are both healthy in the first place, you are not going to catch some debilitating illness, there is safety there," he continued.

“Common sense says we are not going to procreate the human race unless we have a man and a woman," he added.

Meanwhile, A&E will air a Christmas Day marathon of Duck Dynasty episodes, though network sources told Entertainment Weekly that schedules are usually confirmed weeks in advance.

Despite the suspension, A&E is reportedly still planning to air episodes of the show in January in the hopes that the controversy will die down.

[Daily Mail, Entertainment Weekly]