National Review Fires Derbyshire

I wrote yesterday about the outrageous column that John Derbyshire wrote which appeared on the website Taki’s Magazine. One reader (who I greatly respect) sought to defend Derbyshire saying that his "rant was actually a facetious and satirical April 6th response to the outrageous article by Toure' in Time Magazine's April 2nd issue which hit the news stands in the last week of March." Apparently, the people at National Review saw things differently and Derbyshire has been given his walking papers by National Review. This from Rich Lowry:

Anyone who has read Derb in our pages knows he’s a deeply literate, funny, and incisive writer. I direct anyone who doubts his talents to his delightful first novel, “Seeing Calvin Coolidge in a Dream,” or any one of his “Straggler” columns in the books section of NR. Derb is also maddening, outrageous, cranky, and provocative. His latest provocation, in a webzine, lurches from the politically incorrect to the nasty and indefensible. We never would have published it, but the main reason that people noticed it is that it is by a National Review writer. Derb is effectively using our name to get more oxygen for views with which we’d never associate ourselves otherwise. So there has to be a parting of the ways. Derb has long danced around the line on these issues, but this column is so outlandish it constitutes a kind of letter of resignation. It’s a free country, and Derb can write whatever he wants, wherever he wants. Just not in the pages of NR or NRO, or as someone associated with NR any longer.

As Queerty notes, blacks were not the only targets of Derbyshire's less than loving approach to his fellow man. Gays likewise were in his view "a net negative for society." Sadly, Derbyshire's views on blacks and gays - and likely Hispanics don't rate well with him either - are all too typical of today's American conservatives. The irony that I've noted many times is that some of those who most embrace these foul views are the ranks of Christianists who now make up much of the GOP base. Here's more from Queerty:

[H]e considered himself a homophobe, “though a mild and tolerant one.”

This means that I do not like homosexuality, and I think it is a net negative for society. As a conservative, inclined to give the benefit of the doubt (when there is doubt) to long-established practices, I cannot help note that there has never been a human society, at any level of civilization, that has approved egalitarian (that is, adult-adult) homosexuality.

Male-male buggery has been proscribed in every society that ever existed. I am inclined to think that there are good reasons for these universal prohibitions. To say the least of it, male homosexuality is very unhealthy–much more so than, for example, cigarette smoking.

Homosexuality both male and female is also antisocial, in a profound sense. I do not believe that any stable society can be founded on any basis other than heterosexual marriage. Under modern conditions, I think you would have to add “monogamous,” too.

On the positive side, Derbyshire says he does not support the criminalization of homosexuality. Beyond that, he certainly is no friend to LGBT rights. Queerty notes:

And what does giving a “normal life” a try entail exactly? Banging a few babes before giving in to dick? Getting married to a man and popping out a few kids before accepting you’ll always be a dyke? It’s nice that you cop to your homophobia, Mr. Derbyshire, but we’re gonna need a little more information if we’re gonna ratchet back our civil rights to your liking.