Rod Dreher

Raymond "Rod" Oliver Dreher Jr. is an American Conservative Christian and homophobeConservatism's "friendly face" is an old-school homophobe who opposes equal rights for LGBT people and dislikes African people.Rod Dreher’s Bad HistoryRod Dreher, Karin McQuillan, and the Evaporation of White Taboo He is senior editor and a former blogger at The American Conservative. Dreher describes himself as a "Righty journalist, Orthodox Christian, Southerner, Europhile, Ignatian (Team Reilly), eclecticist."Rod Dreher. Twitter.
==Early life and career== 
Dreher is from Louisiana and never shuts up about it. He began working in journalism after college and by the early 2000s was working for the New York Post. The paper received numerous complaints in 2001 when Dreher wrote an article criticizing R&B singer Aaliyah's funeral because it held up traffic.Row over Aaliyah's funeral 
==Homophobia and racism==
Dreher believes that Christians must be granted the right to discriminate against LGBT people whenever their religion demands it. He is author of the book The Benedict Option, arguing anti-LGBT Christians should withdraw into cult-like isolation, modelled on a medieval Benedictine monastery, where they are free to indoctrinate their children in peace.The Christian Retreat From Public Life
In 2018, Dreher attracted widespread criticism for his defense of Donald Trump's offensive comments regarding African countries as "shitholes".Of Sh*tholes and Section 8: A Response to Rod DreherIs the Benedict Option based on Christian principles—or white middle-class ones?
Dreher calls African people “barbarians” but insists that isn’t racist because it is a “perfectly just” description. Dreher took an African-American professor’s remarks out of context, stirring up a racist mob against him in the process.Did a Texas A&M Professor Advocate Killing White People?
Dreher supports TERFs, and defends the right of Christians to discriminate against transgender people.National Review op-ed says treat trans people with basic dignity, right-wing loses it
Dreher is a fan of the right-wing Quillette magazine. In March 2020, Dreher wrote an article supporting "race realist" Bo Winegard who was fired from Marietta College.Hounding The Heretic Bo Winegard.
==Theistic evolution==
Dreher's exact position on evolution is hard to pin down. He believes that the Christian God created the world but says he does not personally believe in young earth creationism. Although he disagrees with the YEC position he has defended creationists, saying "I admire their bullheadedness" and has written articles supporting them.In Defense Of CreationistsBen Carson Is A Creationist. So?
To his credit, Dreher is not a Biblical literalist, but he does cherry-pick what bits he wants to believe from the Bible. He has written that "there may not have been a literal garden of Eden, but at some point there was a metaphysical and spiritual event called the Fall."Did Adam And Eve Really Exist?
Dreher has never written that he accepts the evidence for common descent. Until 2011 he worked for the Templeton Foundation which supports theistic evolution.What good has intelligent design done?Rod Dreher is back. Let joy be unconfined "I was unable to blog elsewhere, under the rules of the John Templeton Foundation, where I worked until just recently. The Templeton Foundation is a truly remarkable place, and I loved the people and the ideas I got to work with there. But in the end, I’m a writer, and I wanted to return to what makes me happy and gives meaning to my life."
P. Z. Myers has commented that Dreher is “totally ignorant of science”. Dreher is really a piece of work Dreher has also drawn criticism from Jerry Coyne.Rod Dreher and the Templeton “bribe”
==Too weird for The American Conservative==
On February 24 2023, Dreher announced on his American Conservative blog that it was ending at that location, and that he was taking his "culture war" blog to "After 12 Years, A Farewell To This Blog" by Rod Dreher, American Conservative, 2023 February 24, archived on 2023 April 19
In March 2023, reported the purported reason for this change: Dreher's blog had simply gotten too weird."How Rod Dreher’s Blog Got a Little “Too Weird” for The American Conservative" by Caleb Ecarma, Vanity Fair, 2023 March 10 According to Vanity Fair, the blog was unique in that it was entirely financed by an heir to a banking fortune named who admired Dreher's work. However, the benefactor started souring on Dreher when Dreher's writings went too far. 
Among the problematic articles were several about homosexuals and that attracted criticism from other bloggers (in a tweet, for instance, Andrew Sullivan simply called one of these articles "evil".)"In which @roddreher wonders whether a man with monkeypox molested two children who then became infected. Zero evidence. Just asking questions. Evil." by Andrew Sullivan, @sullydish, Twitter, 2022 July 24, archived on 2022 July 24 In the articles, he gleefully and luridly depicted the disease's effects, demanded that public health authorities "shut down gay sex festivals and gay sex clubs", and speculated without evidence that two other children who contracted monkeypox got it from "being poked by those strangers on weekend"."The Price Of Pride" by Rod Dreher, American Conservative, 2022 July 30"Why Did Sebastian Köhn Get Monkeypox?" 
Another "red flag" article was a strange musing on circumcision. In this article, he mused about one kid in his elementary school (third grade) class who was black and had been born at home, and therefore was not circumcised. Dreher bizarrely (and with a hint of racism) described the kid's penis as a "monstrous" "primitive root wiener"."Gary Shteyngart’s ‘Gentile Region’" by Rod Dreher, American Conservative, 2021 October 4
==Viktor Orbán apologist==
In the early 2010s, Dreher moved back (with his wife and children) to the rural Louisiana parish where he grew up, where his estranged family of origin still lived. Reportedly the results were terrible for Dreher's personal life; the relationship with his origin family remained estranged, while the move wrecked his own health and his marriage."For Years, the Left Has Laughed at Rod Dreher. Is That Over Now?" by Phil Christman, Slate, 2023 April 16 After the subsequent divorce, Dreher, who while at a four month fellowship at the Hungarian in 2021 developed an admiration for the "Christian conservatism" politics of Viktor Orbán,"what American Conservatives See In Hungary's Leader" by Benjamin Wallace-Wells, New Yorker, 2021 September 13 decided to move to Budapest in October 2022."Goodbye, Louisiana. I Tried" by Rod Dreher, American Conservative, 2022 October 2
Since this move, Dreher has become an apologist for Orbán."How Rod Dreher Caused an International Scandal in Eastern Europe" by Balazs Gulyas, Bulwark, 2023 February 2 However, Dreher's strange thoughts about what "freedom" is like matches well with Dreher's inexperience with reporting while within an authoritarian regimes. In late January 2023, Dreher was invited to a small press office consisting entirely of Orbán sycophant reporters. There, Orbán (among other anti-immigration, anti-Islam, Hungarian Catholic nationalist musings) described how he detested the European Union, and shilled for Vladimir Putin in the context of the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine. Naively, Dreher published these remarks in his American Conservative blog, not knowing that in an authoritarian country, you cannot publish exactly what you hear if it goes against the interest of politicians."Viktor Orban: ‘We Are In A War With Russia’" by Rod Dreher, American Conservative, 2023 January 26, archived on 2023 January 26 The article ended up causing much outrage, particularly in Ukraine, where Dreher's unfiltered reporting actually helped cause a diplomatic scandal. In the fallout from the incident, Dreher scrambled to rewrite the article and attempted to bury the controversial unfiltered comments by Orbán, calling them a "joke".
==Ancient Aliens A-Go-Go==
Dreher has a new book coming out in 2024, "Living In Wonder: Finding Mystery and Meaning in a Secular Age". On a Substack post promoting the book, he wrote: 
This UFO theory is apparently a significant part of the book. Early reviews have been... unappreciative.Living In Wonder "If you’re inclined to Orthodox fundamentalism, then this is your book. If not, not." Kirkus Reviews, 2024 September 14
==See also==
*Toby Young (a Dreher lookalike with less hair)
==External link==
*Rod Dreher
==Notes==
==References==
Category:Bloggers
Category:Christians
Category:Homophobes
Category:Journalists
Category:Living people
Category:Racists
Category:Transphobes