Thursday September 27, 2007

NIHIL OBSTAT. At Beliefnet, Rod Dreher is mad 'cause some leather folk made a poster for a leather event that imitates the famous tableau of the Last Supper.

Dan Savage has the absurdity of this well-covered. In a way, I can't get too outraged about the outrage or the outrage over the outrage. This is fine intramural sport for all of us with time on our hands, and the worst I can say about it is it helps keep Bill Donohue employed.

Slightly more annoying and instructive is Dreher's follow-up, in which he tells us that while a lot of conservatives denounced Ann Coulter when she called Edwards a faggot, liberals never return the high-minded favor. He invites liberal Christians to perform an appropriate auto da fe, and denounce some liberal foibles in the spirit of post-Folsom comity. Dreher seems not to have noticed that there is a whole, credentialed flock of self-proclaimed liberal columnists who spend many of their column inches on such exercises. As Gavin observes:

Among the many variants of this style is that of the nominally liberal columnist (such as Thomas Friedman or Richard Cohen) who finds himself continually forced by events to repeat conservative talking points and express disdain for his fellow liberals -- message: "This hurts me more than it hurts you." When executed well, this routine can be repeated weekly for an indefinite number of years.

It's a marketable schtick. But demands that others emulate it without pay are rather rich, especially coming from someone whose anti-gay animus is obvious whenever he mentions homosexuals.

This is the sort of thing that gives moderation a bad name.