Several years back, I worked as an editor at The Washington Post, and I still have good friends there. So it is with a combination of sadness and astonishment that I've watched the paper's precipitous editorial decline over the last few years. Lately it seems that hardly a week passes without some controversy arising--further embarrassing revelations about the salons, a shoddily researched editorial*, an online post by a columnist filled with falsehoods and undisclosed conflicts. But I honestly cannot imagine how anyone--anyone--at the Post could have imagined that this foul screed by Catholic League President Bill Donohue merited publication in the "On Faith" section of the paper's website:
Sexual libertines, from the Marquis de Sade to radical gay activists, have sought to pervert society by acting out on their own perversions. What motivates them most of all is a pathological hatred of Christianity. They know, deep down, that what they are doing is wrong, and they shudder at the dreaded words, "Thou Shalt Not." But they continue with their death-style anyway....
The culture war is up for grabs. The good news is that religious conservatives continue to breed like rabbits, while secular saboteurs have shut down: they're too busy walking their dogs, going to bathhouses and aborting their kids. Time, it seems, is on the side of the angels.
I would make a joke about the peculiar dog-walking reference, but the piece is really too vile even to mock. I plucked out two representative paragraphs but there are ten more nearly as bad. How did this noxious rant find its way into the Post? Is there anyone there who will defend the decision to publish it?
*corrected; I'd initially written "op ed," of which there have been been a few shoddy examples of late as well.
(h/t Andrew Sullivan)