tl;dr, apologies
Which is a totally valid point, and I'm not saying that Sturges and Willingham are being prejudiced (last response I said "on purpose," I should have clarified that I'm not saying they're being prejudiced on purpose or even at all, although they may be . . . the point is, I'm not trying to pass judgement on whether their writing is prejudiced or not), but instead of saying that, Sturges (if indeed that's who responded) said something along the lines of "No I'm a liberal so I can't be racist, and also we're not being racist! Also, it never occurred to us that what we wrote could be taken as racist!" The point you make about the way the team falls apart is valid, because it's actually looking at the work and taking evidence from the actual writing, but the "no I'm a liberal" argument isn't, so I suggested that maybe he should re-examine his writing to see what prompted people to call it racist/homophobic/etc. instead of denying it outright, in case there is something in those claims. (Albeit, I said it a lot more glibly in my original comment, but the meaning is still there)