Idiot

I sent this story of a horrific murder in East Texas to Nat-Wu and Adam over the weekend, both of whom reacted to the story by saying "that's one of the worst things I've ever read." Which was pretty much what I thought when I read it too. Well, via John Cole and Andrew Sullivan, it seems that Rod Dreher had a different reaction to a minor part of the story:

...the killings aren't what shocked me about this story. What got me was this: This is a tiny East Texas town -- and there's a bisexual culture in one of them, among the teenagers? WTF? What do I not get about teenage life these days? What do I not get about the cultural air kids breathe?

I am so not going to give my children over to this culture, if I can help it. So not going to do it.But that's what the Caffeys thought to, I guess.

This is the same guy who referred to some of his fellow conservatives as "mongoloids", so we already know that typer's remorse is an issue for Dreher. Then Dreher goes on to update his post to clarify that-gosh no-he doesn't think murders were the result of the family daughter being bisexual:

I'm not saying bisexuals killed that family.Good grief. It's obvious that the murderers include the daughter and her boyfriend. The bisexuality thing was a mere aside that I found more startling than the murders, given the small-town culture where this crime took place.

Dreher's really going out of his way to make sure you know that a "culture of bisexuality" is more "startling" than the fact that nearly an entire family was murdered. Dreher points out the venue-East Texas-more than once, and that's for good reason. Given how backwards, homophobic and repressive the air can be in East Texas then it's no wonder that he's "shocked" and "startled" not only that anybody might manage to be gay, but that several people might manage to be gay AND hang out with each other. He disapproves of this of course, the implication of course being that approves of an environment being so repressive that gay kids can't possibly hang out with each other. His opinion on an environment in which a child can arrange the murder of almost her entire family goes unregistered.

Anyway Dreher meant to air only the typical conservative disapproval of the homosexual "lifestyle", but what he really revealed was the continuing and unabated intolerance practiced by social conservatives. To him and his ilk horrific murders of families are run-of-the-mill, everyday events that "just happen" these days, but a bisexual "culture" at a high school is what prompts him to grab his keyboard and rail against the moral collapse of our society that must be railed against and that our children must be defended from. Such is conservatism these days; nary a blink at violence, but the thought of two girls kissing gives them the willies. And people like him wonder why people like us don't take him or any of his ilk seriously? What an ass.