The New 'Friendlier Face' of Conservatism Is an Old-School Homophobe

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/media/new-friendlier-face-conservatism-old-school-homophobe



You may not know the name Rod Dreher, but you will. This April, Grand Central Publishing is releasing his The Little Way of Ruthie Leming: A Southern Girl, a Small Town, and the Secret of a Good Life , for which he was paid a small fortune. I have not read the book, so let’s defer to the publisher for a synopsis:

The Little Way of Ruthie Leming follows Rod Dreher, a Philadelphia journalist, back to his hometown of St. Francisville, Louisiana (pop. 1,700) in the wake of his younger sister Ruthie's death. When she was diagnosed at age 40 with a virulent form of cancer in 2010, Dreher was moved by the way the community he had left behind rallied around his dying sister, a schoolteacher. He was also struck by the grace and courage with which his sister dealt with the disease that eventually took her life. In Louisiana for Ruthie's funeral in the fall of 2011, Dreher began to wonder whether the ordinary life Ruthie led in their country town was in fact a path of hidden grandeur, even spiritual greatness, concealed within the modest life of a mother and teacher. In order to explore this revelation, Dreher and his wife decided to leave Philadelphia, move home to help with family responsibilities and have their three children grow up amidst the rituals that had defined his family for five generations....

The publicity push has already commenced and Little Way has been critically well-received. The book is going to make a mint. It will, I predict, be passed around churches and bought in bulk for book clubs. I wouldn’t be surprised if Dreher ends up promoting the book on Oprah; he’s a decent writer, the story is assuredly compelling and he comes off as a reasonable sort.

***SNIP

“Fully human.” In 2009, Dreher worried that homosexuality might be “legitimized.” Were that to happen, he wrote, that would “lock in, and on a legal front, to codify, a purely contractual, nihilistic view of human sexuality.” He continued: “I believe this would be a profound distortion of what it means to be fully human.”

“Death of the soul.” In the same post, Dreher says that “failing to live by Christian sexual morality” -- i.e., being gay -- “contributes to the debasement of one's character, and the death of the soul.”

[joeybee12]

1. He's gay, isn't he?

That photo screams "bottom."

Crude, perhaps, but you get my point.

[LeftofObama]

2. Exactly what I was thinking.

Like most homophobes, I wonder what's in his closet?

[joeybee12]

3. Hate to say it, but gay homophobes are the worst...

They have a vested interest in proving how evil they are for some reason.

[stevenleser]

4. Common phenomenon among all kinds of bigotry

Someone with just a little bit of Jewish or African American or various other ancestries could also be some of the worst bigots against those groups of people.

There is something there about being desperate to not be associated with whatever the discriminated against group is. "I'm not those terrible things, I dont belong with 'them', I am one of the good group".

Pathetic and cowardly really, but apparently not uncommon.