Rod Dreher Comes for You
Last week, in The Dallas Morning News Opinion blog, Rod Dreher defended the free speech rights of an anti-Islamic politician, Geert Wilders, who is being charged with inciting hatred and discrimation against Muslims. This weekend, in a Viewpoints column in The Dallas Morning News, Rod Dreher stands up for the contributors to the anti-gay Proposition 8 in California that discriminates based on sexual orientation. So far, Rod Dreher is being consistent, supporting the bigots in both cases.
It's the logic Rod uses in each case that twists his principles into knots. In the case of Geert Wilders, free speech is the overriding principle Rod defends. No matter that Wilders is considered to be a despicable bigot (a point Dreher never makes), I agree with Dreher that he has a right to speak his mind, no matter how much civil, enlightened people disagree with his vile politics (Rod Dreher excluded).
In the California case, however, it's the people exercising their free speech rights who Rod condemns and wants to suppress. California law makes public the names and addresses of donors to political causes. Someone has taken those long lists of names, sorted alphabetically, and reformatted them geographically, using Google Maps. He published the result on a web site EightMaps.com. How would such information be useful? Grass-roots organizers can use it to drive get-out-the-vote efforts, avoiding the strongholds of the anti-gay faction. Activists can use it to identify the locations of people to lobby to change their position. And everyone can use it to identify which neighbors might be a danger to their civil liberties. After all, if today they come for gays, tomorrow they might come for you.
In an older Opinion blog posting, Rod Dreher suggested he might become sympathetic to striking down the law that allows sites like EightMaps.com to exist. In his latest essay, Dreher has the effrontery to quote Robert Bolt's play "A Man for all Seasons" to support his inclination to suppress sites like EightMaps.com.
Roper: Cut a road through the law to get after the Devil? Yes. I'd cut down every law in England to do that.If there's a William Roper at work in Dallas, it's Rod Dreher himself. He may think the gay rights activists are devils, but he ought to give his devils the benefit of the law for his own safety's sake. The bigotry he aims against gays today may someday be aimed against bigots like himself.More: And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned on you where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? ... I give the Devil benefit of law for my own safety's sake.
2 comments:
Hey!
I was the one who quoted A Man for All Seasons in the religion blog a few days back!
Ed Cognoski is a thief! I'm going to publish his address on google maps!
hehe!
Joseph B
That is a great scene, isn't it? I used it myself in a comment on the Religion blog as long ago as April, 2007. And Rod Dreher used it (correctly) back in 2005. I do object to his misuse of it in this case.
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