{"id":3381,"date":"2009-03-10T22:01:14","date_gmt":"2009-03-11T03:01:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/?p=3381"},"modified":"2009-03-10T22:01:14","modified_gmt":"2009-03-11T03:01:14","slug":"rod-dreher-a-summary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/3381","title":{"rendered":"Rod Dreher – A Summary"},"content":{"rendered":"

DJW over at Lawyers, Guns and Money sums it up<\/a>….<\/p>\n

\n

In the post <\/a>Scott mentioned earlier<\/a>, Dreher insists that the jarring juxtaposition that occasioned many readers to question his values and priorities, has been the subject of a significant misinterpretation. It’s the surprisingness of the "bisexuality is cool" claim that motivated his post, not it’s relative wrongness.<\/p>\n

Many commenters remain, understandably, unpersuaded by his effort to explain his bizarre post. But it’s necessary to take Dreher at his word to fully grasp the depravity of his position. So let’s grant him: a) that a remark by one (horribly traumatized) parent is sufficient evidence to to grant that bisexuality is indeed "cool" in the high school culture of one East Texas town, and b) that while this doesn’t rise to the level of parricide in an index of moral wrongs, it is a disturbing and troubling trend that suggests something that was once right with the world has gone wrong.<\/p>\n

The nature of the typical experience of non-heterosexual adolescents in our schools and our society is hardly a secret. The ostracization and bullying of those suspected to be non-heterosexual takes an enormous psychological toll, and has life and death consequences, as evidenced higher rates of depression and suicide amongst non-heterosexual youth. They typically live in fear: fear that something is horribly wrong with them, fear of being rejected by their friends and family, and fear of violence. But: in one small town, at least for some non-heterosexual youth, there’s a chance this status quo might be changing. For anyone whose moral worldview contains any compassion, changes to this horrific status quo are a sign of hope. For Dreher, it’s the precise opposite.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Dreher was adamant in that post that he was "so keeping his kids away" from modern American culture, if that meant a toleration of bisexuality…let alone one supposes homosexuality.  But what if one of those poor kids is gay themselves? <\/p>\n

Tens of thousands of gay kid come of age in that hostile environment every generation and many of them don’t make it to adulthood alive.  And it’s a fact that many of their parents would actually rather they killed themselves, or were killed, then grew up to be happy, contented gay adults.  It doesn’t take much to imagine where Dreher fits in.  He reads a horrific news article about a home invasion massacre, and instead of grieving for the dead kids, their mother, and the father who has to now carry those horrible memories to his grave, he goes on a rant about something the father said offhandedly about how cool bisexuality was in his town.  I read something like this and I can’t get out of my head how horrible their last moments must have been (which is why I avoid crime stories in the newspapers).  Dreher, reads it and is just stunned by the fact that bisexuals in one small East Texas town aren’t hated.\n<\/p>\n

This is eminently typical of what hate does to a person’s conscience.  This is the conscience of the culture warriors.  Look at it if you have the stomach for it.  There is the Pit, grinning back at you.  The grotesque indifference to human life in that crime story, and in Dreher’s callow, superficial response to it, are of a single piece.  What is more shocking then the murder of a man’s entire family?  Why…bisexuality of course.\n<\/p>\n

Don’t look for too long.  Nietzsche was right about the dangers of staring into an Abyss.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

DJW over at Lawyers, Guns and Money sums it up…. In the post Scott mentioned earlier, Dreher insists that the jarring juxtaposition that occasioned many readers to question his values and priorities, has been the subject of a significant misinterpretation. It’s the surprisingness of the "bisexuality is cool" claim that motivated his post, not it’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[49,32,21,20,90,46],"class_list":["post-3381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-thumping-my-pulpit","tag-crime-and-violence","tag-hate","tag-the-abyss","tag-the-american-gutter","tag-the-human-gutter","tag-the-kultar-kampf"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3381"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3381\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}