Former and current Alexandria Authors Geoff Guth, Turmarion, John E. and others do their best to break his fall.
You will have to read the rest of their comments here, here, and here, including those of the equally astute Sharon Astyk, but you should, despite the sucking quicksand of sophistry you must traverse to get there.
There is a reason this latest Dreher psychodramatic crisis takes him three posts (and counting) to sputter through, and it has to do with the imminently fragile psychology of heroes and role models.
The psychological syllogism goes something like this:
“Wendell Berry is a more notable and famous localist-communitarianist than Rod Dreher.”
“Rod Dreher admires Wendell Berry’s localism-communitarianism.”
“Rod Dreher tries to pursue his own Berryan fame by attempting to build his own recognizeably definitive localistic-communitarianistic movement called Crunchy Cons.”
“Crunchy Con Rod Dreher is like Wendell Berry; when one thinks of Rod Dreher, one should equate him with Wendell Berry.”
“In effect, Rod Dreher and Wendell Berry are equally notable and famous.”
“Wendell Berry takes a hard tangential turn, still having everything to do with localism-communitarianism, but a turn which ends up being 180 degrees removed from Rod Dreher’s particular conservative Christian views on homosexuality and gay marriage.”
“Oh, noes! Now Rod Dreher is no longer like Wendell Berry; when one thinks of Rod Dreher, one can no longer equate him with Wendell Berry.”
“Rod Dreher and Wendell Berry are no longer equally notable and famous. That can only be because Wendell Berry has become demented with age, like Grandpa Simpson.”
So Rod Dreher is understandably bitter: his hero has flicked him off his hero’s pedestal by refusing to become what his worshipper expected him to become so that they would be equivalent.
“Wendell Berry, however, stubbornly remains a more notable and famous localist-communitarianist than Rod Dreher (probably because, unlike Dreher, he actually does it.)”
The lesson, grasshoppers: beware of heroes other than yourself. They may unpredictably abandon you to what you are without them.
H. M. Stuart
The most recent essay by Rod, the third “here” in your list is particularly amazing to me since it seems to say, “What – he doesn’t believe the same thing about gay marriage now that he did twenty years ago?!?”
Yeah – people sometimes think differently about things than they did twenty years ago.
This quote from Rod is also somewhat telling:
I’m sure some of them might like an explanation, but I don’t see where they have a particular claim to such.
This is just speculation, but perhaps some of the hard feelings on Rod’s part regarding Berry’s change of heart is that it seems to reflect a view that gay marriage really isn’t all that big a deal and the people who seem really intent on stopping it also happen to look like a bunch of jerks.
My good John E.,
Yes, it is Dreher’s psychological, not rational, claim to entitlement which reveals the peculiar and far from healthy relationship Dreher had engineered for his idol.
He had psychologically extruded himself into becoming the much larger and more agreeable Dreher-is-Berry-as-Dreher, then the larger Berry-being suddenly betrayed! him by popping, like a balloon, leaving the Dreher balloon-stub whizzling back to earth solo, conspicuously and nakedly holding his peculiar (at least, for a localist-communitarnianist) and now glaringly idiosyncratic obsession with gay marriage forth alone in a realm (localism-communitarianism) within which it now would appear to be, rationally, something of a contradiction, at the least certainly not simply communitarian-neighborly.
The commenters mentioned who repeatedly refer to Dreher living in a “bubble” are kind enough not to mention to him that the bubble he inhabits is overwhelmingly one solely of his own psychodramatic construction, within which it will be his lot to live out his life alternately betrayed, victimized, or bullied by some element or another until the end of time.
I would warn the impressionable young away from such a trap.
H. M. Stuart
Alexandria
…and nakedly holding his peculiar (at least, for a localist-communitarnianist) and now glaringly idiosyncratic obsession with gay marriage forth alone in a realm (localism-communitarianism) within which it now would appear to be, rationally, something of a contradiction, at the least certainly not simply communitarian-neighborly.
Indeed. Once you take the position, as Rod claims to do, that homosexuals are not ipso facto criminal perverts, I see no good (secular) reason for denying those who wish to pair up with a compatible partner and have that partnership receive the same sorts of protections that heterosexuals also enjoy.
My good John E.
By recoiling against Berry, Dreher has now, by definition, deprived himself of the more general, warmer and more fuzzy imprimatur of Berry communitarianism, the latter which now will obviously admit married homosexuals into the community.
Where does that then leave Dreher’s Benedict Option? Much more clearly perceived by contrast to now be much narrower, precisely that much less Berry-commonsensical, all-the-kids-are-doing-it – will Dreher now admit squishy Episcopalians? Blacks? – and that much more liable to be perceived as bound for a lonely eyrie in craggy, far off the mainstream Idaho, where the more suspect sorts of segregationists are commonly thought to hole up. The “little way of Ruthie Leming” will now, in his hands, begin to look uncomfortably more like “the little way of Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche”.
Not exactly the sort of posture helpful in cultivating any broader audience of more than already faithful, already discipled followers, a move he certainly would not have rationally chosen in and of itself.
H. M. Stuart
Alexandria
I always assumed Rod’s Benedict Option would be only welcoming towards his preferred orthodoxy.
Meanwhile, in the actual reality of living in my small town, I’ve found that the handful of openly gay people are regarded with no more than the same nominal curiosity that people have for the East Indian family who owns the local gas station/convenience store.
Xenophobia isn’t what it used to be, I guess.
Indeed. Once you take the position, as Rod claims to do, that homosexuals are not ipso facto criminal perverts,
Although in one of his “Berry” screeds, he did say that homosexuals were less than fully human. He of course later attempted to walk it back in a couple paragraphs of double talk that DSL would be proud of.
I find that I must correct my original statement – the interval between Wendell Berry’s stated change of opinion was not twenty years, but rather thirty years.
Which makes Rod’s astonishment all the more peculiar to me. Thirty years – people change their opinions about things in thirty years.
I have to admit that, without much thinking about it, I just assumed that Wendell Berry would have been pro-same-sex marriage at this point, because the man who introduced me to Wendell Berry (via a book given to me on the occasion of my marriage, nearly 25 years ago) is strongly pro-same-sex marriage. It turns out that I’m right and Rod Dreher is wrong, but I suppose that’s largely chance, since my assumption that Berry had to agree with me is rationally about the same as Dreher’s assumption that Berry had to agree with him.
But, yeah, a whole lot of people have changed their minds about same-sex marriage since 30 years ago.