Dick Van Dyke has perfect response to Piers Morgan ‘gender fluid’ tantrum
Mary Poppins Returns star Dick van Dyke (Frederick M. Brown/Getty)
92-year-old Mary Poppins Returns actor Dick Van Dyke has quietly shut down Piers Morgan after the host’s latest swipe at gender fluid people.
Good Morning Britain host Piers Morgan has made an increasingly-bizarre series of digs at gender fluid people, frequently bringing the subject up on TV, in newspaper columns and on Twitter.
But the TV host’s obsession backfired on him when he posted a tweet on the subject referencing Dick Van Dyke, who recently reprised one of his most iconic roles for Mary Poppins Returns.
Piers Morgan wrote on Twitter: “Imagine being called Dick Van Dyke in this PC-crazed era? Poor guy. He’ll have to change his name to Richard Van Non-Binary-Gender-Fluid.”
The comments earned a rebuke from Dick Van Dyke himself, in effortlessly classy style.
Dick Van Dyke responded to Piers Morgan with a Dick Van Dyke meme
Responding to the TV host, Dick Van Dyke posted a Dick Van Dyke meme—specifically, himself looking unimpressed on TV show Diagnosis Murder.
The actor has also changed his profile picture on the website to show support for NOH8, a high-campaign campaign against homophobic and transphobic bullying.
Dick Van Dyke is a surprising LGBT ally
The actor, who was born 78 years before the full decriminalisation of homosexuality in the United States, told NOH8 of his reasons for opposing homophobia: “Hate eats up your insides.”
Speaking to the AV Club in 2015, he called out Kentucky clerk Kim Davis for refusing to issue marriage licenses to gay couples.
He said: “It seems to me, in my opinion, that she misread, or misunderstood the biblical admonition. The admonition was for people who practice homosexuality.
“There’s nothing in there about the rest of it, casting judgement on them or administering the punishment. That’s God’s job… I think, really, she’s got it wrong. She’s not supposed to administer the punishment.”
He added: “Some people never change their mind through their whole lives, about anything, despite new information that comes in.
“And now that we know that homosexuality is not a choice, it’s biological, I think we have to love and understand them.”
Piers Morgan claims gender fluid people are ‘damaging to society’
Piers Morgan, 39 years his junior, has a harder time with LGBT+ issues.
Appearing on Good Morning Britain earlier this year, he claimed: “Where I’ve got a problem is this whole, opting out of gender. Being gender-fluid. waking up one day and thinking you want to be whatever you feel like.
“Is that not damaging to society, if we allow everyone to self-identify however the hell they like?”
Interviewing non-binary couple Fox Fisher and Owl on Good Morning Britain in 2017, Morgan told them: “Schools are now running riot with non-binary kids. It’s like a contagion.”
On other occasions he has suggested he could identify as an elephant, and has interrogated unsuspecting guests about their genitals in live interviews.
Writing in the Mail on Sunday, Morgan confessed that his “number one pet hate at the moment is the absurd ‘gender-fluid’ movement, driven by people who don’t wish to be defined as either male or female.”
