Dreher cites Wendell Berry on unfairness toward traditionalists

Wendell Berry, on “tolerance and multiculturalism,” from his essay “The Joy of Sales Resistantce”:

Quit talking bad about women, homosexuals, and preferred social minorities, and you can say anything you want about people who haven’t been to college, manual workers, country people, peasants, religious people, unmodern people, old people, and so on.

He is being sarcastic, of course. But this came to mind when thinking about the wisdom of Wal-mart (and other big corporations) joining the crusade for gay rights even above religious liberty. I will give the corporate leaders credit for being sincere, but it’s a terrific business move. Join the crusade for gay rights, and you can do whatever you like on the business front without much complaint from progressives. [edit]

Wendell Berry, let me make clear, came out a few years ago in favor of same-sex marriage, which startled many of his fans, including me. I want to make that clear before I say what I’m going to say here, which is this: one of the most striking aspects of the whole gay rights public argument, one that is in full display in the Indiana pageantry, and that I find so chilling, is the degree to which the voices of the overculture — big media, big corporations, national Democratic politicians — speak of their fellow Americans who hold traditional religious convictions as if they were freaks and threats to the common good. Yes, this discourse is heard on the right too, but not at the same level. You see it on more or less the fringes of the right, but there is nobody at the same level of influence and of the same elite status on the right speaking in the same way as legions of people do on the left — people with very loud voices and very large bullhorns.

Read more by Rod Dreher at The American Conservative

See also "The Prejudice Against Country People"