News,  Politics

They really do hate people like me

Rod Dreher weighs-in on the recent article by The Washington Post’s outgoing Ombudsman. Like most other traditional marriage supporters, he was scandalized by the piece (I mentioned it here). But Dreher’s article caught my eye because he is an insider and is deeply critical of his own profession.

When it comes to reporting on the culture war, my profession is deeply corrupt, and profoundly self-righteous. The contempt with which so many within newsrooms hold social conservatives and traditional Christians is real. Stories like this one temper my sorrow over the demise of my profession. They really do hate people like me, and consider us not worthy of the basic fairness they would use in approaching their reporting on criminals and terrorists.

Read the rest here.

23 Comments

  • Dan Phillips

    He makes the excellent point that the correspondent wasn’t even asking for preferential reporting — just even-handedness.

    And even that got not just a “no,” but a “heck, no!”

  • Don Johnson

    I think they are so convinced of their correctness that they cannot understand how anyone might disagree with them. But this also sounds like many other people besides the liberal media.

  • Nathan Cesal

    Denny, your last four our so posts have been a lot of bemoaning about not getting something that you aren’t willing to give to someone that doesn’t holds the same views as your own.

      • Nathan Cesal

        2 of your recent posts: They really do hate people like me & Asinine, ignorant, unfair journalism at Washington Post…

        You want basic fairness in giving both sides a chance in the dialogue. You don’t want the reporters to have made up their mind and present a biased position. This is NOT what you do with your own blog and how you moderate the comments here. You present one viewpoint as absolutely right and I think you delete dissenting comments too easily.

        2 more of your recent posts: How to respond to marginalization, intimidation, and criminalization of biblical Christianity & Pastor Jeffress’ Response to Cultured Despisers in the Media

        You feel that Christians are being marginalized, intimidated and criminalized by “cultured despisers.” This is EXACTLY what you want to continue to happen to homosexuals. You want to exclude them from your family, your church, your college, the boy scouts and the military. You want to keep them from civil marriage. You even want to refuse them cake! I’m sure the list goes on… How can these things NOT be marginalizing & intimidating?

        You want respect within the culture, but refuse to give it. You want to live peaceably within the community and have the freedom to follow your conscience, but you don’t want to afford these things to everyone. You want the control and can’t relinquish any of it.

        • Elizabeth Anscombe

          Is it marginalizing and intimidating for people with a severe mental illness not to receive full cooperation in their illusion of normalcy?

          Take bipolar disorder. A good, honest employer might legitimately have hesitations about giving a demanding job to a worker with this illness. It’s not that the employer wants the applicant to starve, it’s just that he doesn’t think he’s qualified for the job.

          Also, we’re not advocating criminal penalties for homosexuals, but they want criminal penalties for us. We are simply trying to protect them from harming other people in the course of living out their illusion, and that includes keeping them out of the Boy Scouts, preventing them from being legally “married,” and so forth. These are not fundamental human rights, they are privileges. There can be a variety of reasons why someone may be denied one or any of these privileges. More examples: In the old days, it used to be that you couldn’t vote without owning property (something I sometimes wish we could return to). You can’t drive a car unless you have a license. You can’t drink alcohol unless you are a certain age. Does that meant that the 16-year-old who tries to buy a beer is being oppressed and excluded if his request is denied? No, it just means that this privilege isn’t open to him.

          • buddyglass

            Also, we’re not advocating criminal penalties for homosexuals…

            Possibly because that ship sailed a long time ago. Did you think the court ruled correctly in Lawrence v. Texas at the time, or had you hoped it would rule differently? If you could wave a magic wand and recriminalize homosexual acts, would you? Why or why not? Even if you would not, I’ve met a air number of Christian social conservatives who would be quite willing to. What about public displays of affection by same-sex couples?

          • Nathan Cesal

            So, Elizabeth, you should have no qualms about Christians being excluded from the privilege of public discourse because they are considered to be delusional. It’s for their own good; they don’t know the harm they do to society.

            • Elizabeth Anscombe

              This isn’t just a matter of disagreeing with somebody’s ideas. It’s a mental illness. If I think I’m a postage stamp, I don’t just have mistaken ideas, I have a Problem. Similarly, if I’m attracted to the same sex, I have a psychological disorder.

                • buddyglass

                  If a mental illness impacts job performance then no, I don’t think employers should be forced to hire people with that mental illness. And, in fact, they’re not. Otherwise I’m fine with anti-discrimination laws.

                  • Elizabeth Anscombe

                    The mental illness of homosexuality (and perhaps even more so the transgender disorder) certainly could impact job performance if part of the rules for job performance include not engaging in immorally aberrant behavior. If the person insists on dressing/behaving in ways that flaunt his twisted notion of sexuality, an employer should have every right to turn him down.

                    • buddyglass

                      There are very few jobs for which abstinence from “immorally aberrant behavior” (in general) is necessary in order for an employee to perform the activities of the job.

                      Certainly a given employer could stipulate it as an additional requirement unrelated to job performance, but that’s not exactly the same thing.

                      Also consider that many outside the church view religious belief as a form of mental illness. Are you on board with them categorically discriminating against Christians?

                    • Elizabeth Anscombe

                      As far as I know, believing what the Bible teaches has never been certified as a mental illness. Besides, this isn’t just about what people think. Truth matters.

                    • Nathan Cesal

                      Not one gay person that I know has any problem doing their work, maintaining a household, making decisions, engaging in intelligent conversations, acting in a socially approved manner, having empathy for other people, etc. etc. And I know “lots” of gay people, like a whole hundred or something.

                      So, puh-leeze… gay people aren’t mentally ill, but I realize that can happen just like it happens for straight people. And please think before you wave around some ridiculous statistics.

                      The problems that Denny reports Christians are having just recently are a result of Christians giving no room to gays in the PUBLIC square. Christians have been preaching for ages past that gays don’t even have the right to exist — not in the church and not in the secular public either. AND THE GAYS BELIEVED IT! They believed it to the point of killing themselves, shocking themselves with electricity, and other crazy stuff. So yeah, the gays were crazy back then — crazy for believing you. Now, they’ve come to their senses…

                      When it comes to American culture over the last fifty to one hundred years, which group do you think has been categorically hated, marginalized, intimidated and criminalized — Christians or homosexuals? So, who really has the right to bring up such injustices? Not Denny Burk. Not John Piper…

                      The church royally messed up. And they still want to control all of society. I think the best thing the church can do is proclaim the truth of the Bible by living it — show the world it works. You’ll catch more flies that way than you will by forcing someone to live according to the law. Forcing the world to live by a law they can’t understand doesn’t sound very NT to me — not very Christian at all…

                    • Elizabeth Anscombe

                      You mean Christians are certifiably insane? I’m sorry, I wasn’t aware of that statistic. Could I see it?

                      I don’t know where you’re getting the ridiculous notion that we don’t think gays “have a right to exist.” Gay people are protected under the law like any other American citizen. They have a right to a fair trial, free speech, all the other constitutional rights. However, as far as I know, the right to get married to whomever you want isn’t one of those rights.

                      Yes, gay people have been and are bullied. However, have you considered that perhaps the problem lies not within the church but within a public education system that allows feral bullies to rule the roost? Have you considered that for every gay kid who’s told he should go kill himself, there’s a fat kid or a nerdy kid who gets the same suggestion?

                      We’ve created a Lord of the Flies educational system, and of course it affects gay kids because it affects anyone a schoolyard bully views as different or uncool. This isn’t the Christians’ fault. Only the most crazy fringe Christians are actually following the extreme example set in the schoolyard. The vast majority of true Christians have no wish to cause bodily harm to homosexuals, and we certainly do not pray for the death of any man.

                      However, we believe that there is sin and brokenness in the world and that consequently, some people are forced to carry a burden they may not want to carry. A refusal to acknowledge that inner brokenness has ramifications for EVERYONE in society. As a result, certain privileges should be denied to such people. To give another basic example, trans-gender people should not be allowed to use the restroom that fits with what they think their gender is. Recently a trans-gender “woman” was seen parading around a girls’ bathing area with his genitalia exposed. When parents complained, HE got an apology. That is the kind of behavior we cannot and should not tolerate.

      • Mary Ellen Krummrich

        In the article re: Tim Tebow’s refusal to speak at the First Baptist Church of Dallas, there was no mention of First Baptist’s well-documented history of anti-Catholicism. There are many who blame the late (and by many, unlamented) Rev. Criswell’s diatribes against President Kennedy for creating a climate of hate in that most fundamentalist city, which led inexorably to his assasination. I certainly hope this that was not the case, and that a highly regarded Christian leader ought not to be held responsible for a national tragedy. But I’m afraid that this cannot be completely discounted. Peace be with you!

  • JAVIER

    I think the commenter is saying that it was all well and fine with your ilk when decades ago social conservatives controlled the media, the intelligentsia, and predominant culture. Social conservatives have oppressed gays, bisexuals, religious liberals, and social progressives for most of the nation’s history, not just in media, but through government force. They still advocate that people should not be able to marry people of the same sex primarily because it conflicts with religious conservatives’ dogma, which to mean is extremely hateful and oppressive. Now, they think the shoe is on the other foot, and all they can do is belly ache that they can’t oppress and persecute gay and bisexual people like in the old days.

  • Bob Wheeler

    Interesting thread. I also fall on the socially progressive side of the equation but still enjoy reading Denny’s blog. It’s part of my honest effort to see the whole picture. There are a lot of his posts I agree with but I don’t feel the need to agree with them all, nor do I expect he should feel obligated to only write stuff I agree with. This is called “dialogue” and “respect for opinions”, and it’s what this country is really about.

  • Suzanne McCarthy

    Another kind of relationship is considered quite immoral in secular NorthAmerican society. It is not appropriate for there to be any sexual relations between a person in authority over another person, for example, doctor/patient, employer/employee, prof/student. In this paradigm any sex within a hierarchy is considered coerced and immoral. In this framework, all complementarian relationships are immoral.

    However, complementarians are not blocked from working in education as teachers of children. In fact, in my workplace, we had a complementarian male colleague and he caused no end of difficulties with his highly innapropriate behavior. However, he was never reprimanded and there are no conditions restricting complementarians from the workplace.

    I believe strongly that sex within hierarchy is wrong and against the explicit teaching of 1 Cor. 7. But I am aware of no movement whatsoever to prevent those who have sexual relations with someone who is hierarchically beneath them from marriage and full participation in theworkplace.

    Therefore, I find the argument in this post untenable.

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