I feel sad about Rod Dreher

 I used to enjoy reading Rod Dreher.

Dreher blogs these days at The American Conservative, but I first started paying attention to him back when he wrote regularly at Beliefnet. His social conservatism was never going to be my own, but I admired what appeared to be an independent cast of mind: He was a conservative who opposed the Iraq War, who questioned capitalism's corrosive effects on our souls, who sought out community, who righteously bore witness to sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, and left that church because of it. There were alarming moments in his writing -- a seeming hatred of Muslims, a disregard for immigrants that seemed un-Christian. But for the most part, he seemed thoughtful and generous of spirit. He modeled a kind of conservative thinking that these days I find best representative in writers like Alan Jacobs and David French. I don't always agree with their viewpoints either, but I sometimes learn from them.

Over the last few years, Dreher's writing has curdled into something mean and hard. I don't want to play armchair psychologist, but the shift seems to date from his book, "The Little Way of Ruthie Lemming," and a realization of how completely his small-town family hated and rejected him for his cosmopolitcan ways. I hate that he experienced that -- the end of "Lemming" was shattering to me, frankly.

But where Dreher once seemed curious and generous-spirited, he transformed into one of the most-shrill writers around. A lot of this was focused on sex -- his disdain and hatred for gay and transgender people defines most of his writing these days. Even when it seemingly makes no sense: He went out of his way this week to point out that the author of "In Defense of Looting" is transgender. (In the comments, he said he thought the author's "disordered" mind explained the defense of looting.) 

Dreher roots much of his writing in a Christian morality. But he applies his standards -- and his compassion -- differently to different kinds of people. This is what he wrote* about Kyle Rittenhouse, who stands accused of killing two people in Kenosha:

I’ve said it here before, and I’ll say it again: I don’t see Kyle Rittenhouse as a hero or a villain. I see him as a tragic figure, a kid who inserted himself into a situation where he didn’t belong, and that was way, way over his head. He meant well, but he shouldn’t have been there.

He also wrote about Breonna Taylor, who was killed in her bed by police, but who "had been involved romantically with Jamarcus Glover, a drug-dealing thug."

What happened to George Floyd, Jacob Blake, and Breonna Taylor would not have surprised a man like my father. Floyd was a career criminal and a drughead. Blake was a violent man too. Taylor’s extended romantic relationship with a career criminal brought her to ruin. All of these cases, regardless of how they are adjudicated in a court of law, would have been seen by my father as examples of what happens to people who refuse to live by the Tao (I mean this in the C.S. Lewis sense of “natural law”), or who entangle themselves with those who refuse to live by the Tao. 

So. Dreher is sympathetic of Rittenhouse, a young man who armed himself with a gun, went looking for trouble and found it. But he stands in judgment of Taylor, who found herself caught in a crossfire because of police mistakes.

We all have our rooting interests, I suppose. But Dreher applies a harsher moral standard to a woman who has been killed than the young man who killed. His morality -- the thing that defines him -- makes excuses for some and blame for others. It is ugly. I used to enjoy reading Dreher, and admired his independence of mind. Now, he just looks like a cautionary tale to me.

*I don't feel like linking him. His articles are easy enough to find if you want.