Devout goose, meet devout gander

July 2, 2009 By

ChildPornStingThe Associated Press report is very, very, very short and raises many more questions than it answers. Here is a typical version (or click here for a longer version in the Los Angeles Times):

WASHINGTON – Authorities have arrested and charged a Duke University official who they say offered his adopted 5-year-old son for sex.

The FBI’s Washington field office said the school’s associate director of the Center for Health Policy, Frank Lombard, was caught in an Internet sting. Authorities said that Lombard tried to persuade a person — whom he did not know was a police officer — to travel to North Carolina to have sex with Lombard’s child.

Court documents charge that Lombard identified himself online as “perv dad for fun.”

The papers also say an unnamed informant, facing charges in his own child sex case, tipped off authorities to Lombard’s activities.

Sadly, in this Culture Wars age, whenever the mainstream coverage is shallow — try to find coverage of any substance (here’s one short report) in North Carolina newspapers — a story as dark and disgusting as this one is going to leap right over the world of journalism and into advocacy media. In some cases, these op-ed style pieces have raised some valid questions. In many more cases they have added fire and heat, rather than light.

Yes, Lombard is openly gay, living with his partner and their two adopted sons. Yes, his job at Duke focuses on medical issues linked to HIV/AIDS in the rural South. Yes, the details in the affadavit in support of the arrest warrant are absolutely hellish. Yes, there are people in mainstream newsrooms who are asking questions about this case and, sooner or later, the answers to those questions may actually make it into balanced, responsible news coverage.

But let me be clear on one thing, concerning the screams about this story out on the online right. The sins and alleged crimes of one gay parent say as much about the motivations and beliefs of those who advocate legal adoptions by gays and lesbians as, well, the sins and crimes of one anti-abortion activist who shoots an abortionist say something valid about the motivations and beliefs of people in the mainstream pro-life movement. In other words — next to nothing. We are not going to be discussing that issue here. Trust me.

So why, pray tell, do I mention this story at GetReligion?

As it turns out, Lombard was — until just a few days ago — a veteran member of the vestry at the Episcopal Church of the Advocate in Chapel Hill, N.C., a progressive, activist congregation on gay issues that has been actively scrubbing most signs of his existence from its website. For those not familiar with Episcopal polity, the vestry is the church’s controlling board. Being on the vestry is similar to being on the parish council, in a Catholic or Orthodox context, or on the board of deacons, in a Baptist context.

Now, here’s the journalistic question that we will discuss: Do you think that journalists would be interested if you had a similar criminal case and the accused was a deacon or board member in an evangelical or Catholic congregation that takes strong stands on these kinds of hot-button social issues?

If this kind of sexy story broke in the mainstream press, would this deacon be called a “devout” Southern Baptist or a “devout,” “practicing” Roman Catholic? I would imagine so.

If so, should Lombard be called a “devout” Episcopalian?

If the religion would be relevant in the case of a Christian conservative, should the religion be relevant in the case of the Christian liberal?

Just asking.

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Filed Under: Anglicanism, Journalism, Mainline, Marriage & family, People, Sex, Social Issues
About TMatt

Terry Mattingly directs the Washington Journalism Center at the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities. He writes a weekly column for the Scripps Howard News Service.

  • dalea

    I would answer yes to your questions; coverage should be the same. With the caveat that child abuse cases can be very complicated things.

  • http://www.perpetuaofcarthage.blogspot.com Perpetua

    He is a devout and well respected member of his Episcopal congregation, as evidenced by his membership on the vestry. If he were in a position of leadership of a conservative church, I also have a suspicion that the church affiliation would be part of the story. But, do you have examples of this?

  • Martha

    I’ve seen some comments to the effect that the local media are all liberal-leaning and are not interested in hounding an accused like Howard (member of Duke, gay parent of adopted kids, anti-racism advocate, vestryman of liberal Episcopal church), which I think is unfair.

    But yes – there did not seem to be the immediate interest in a juicy scandal that you would expect from the media. It is a little odd that they haven’t been beating down the door of the church or doorstepping the neighbours (although one local reporter was run out of it when he tried talking to the neighbours in the co-housing estate).

  • http://lowly.blogspot.com Undergroundpewster

    Coverage should be the same but who cares about the Episcopal Church anymore? The religion ghost is certainly missing from this A.P. report.

  • http://themcj.com Christopher Johnson

    This story blasts the notion that bloggers don’t do journalism. Stand Firm’s Greg Griffith has owned this almost from the start and was the person who uncovered the Church of the Advocate’s attempts to remove Lombard’s name from their site:

    http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/23600/

  • Deacon John M. Bresnahan

    A good question to ask.

  • David Adrian

    I’d answer “yes” to your questions. I think it’s also instructive to compare and contrast the media’s coverage of this case with its coverage of the rape case against the Duke lacrosse team.

  • http://www.soilcatholics.blogspot.com Peggy

    I agree that the man’s religious affiliation and role in his church are important–or should be. Recall that the media really went into spy Robert Hanssen’s membership in Opus Dei and his extent of Catholic religious devotion. Also, Law & Order made dozens of episodes out of media stereotypes of pro-life Christians as unstable killers. I recall there was a man in CA who snapped and killed relatives at a party this past Christmas. The media spoke of his active participation at his church (Catholic, I think).

    David Adrian’s point is true as well. Columnist Mike Adams, law prof in the south, has been having a field day with this.

  • BobN

    No decent journalist should use the word “devout” when describing someone, regardless of church or political leanings. How could one know whether the person was devout? Now, I’ve certainly seen articles in which fellow parishioners describe someone as “devout” or “apparently devout”, but that’s different, isn’t it?

    On another note, how in the world can you describe this as “a sexy story”?

  • http://www.ecben.net Will

    Of course, another thing we will not see is assertions that it only happened because the Episcopal Church does not “allow” women to be vestry/does not allow vestrymen to marry.

  • KayNKansas

    It’s my opinion that the word devout equates with brainwashed.

  • Rev Dr Mom

    I don’t object to any background info about such a suspect being published. And if he were a member of any other denomination, that should be mentioned, too.

    What I DO object to is the attempt by some to use this to make TEC look bad. The man is a pedophile and there is NO ONE in the church who would endorse that. The sad truth is that pedophiles come in all sizes and shapes: straight, gay, Episcopal, Baptist, dare I say even “Anglican”. And their activities are rarely known by those who are around them until they are caught this way.

    The fact that he belongs to an inclusive church is no more causal than if he was a Jehovah’s Witness or a Mormon or a member of ACNA.

  • http://perpetuaofcarthage.blogspot.com Perpetua

    Hi Rev Dr. Mom,

    You don’t have the information to claim:
    The man is a pedophile and there is NO ONE in the church who would endorse that.

    If you had made the same claim a month ago, you would have just been proved wrong due to this man being a vestryman in the church. There are others you just don’t know about yet.

    The church should be sharing with the world any clues that they overlooked at the time but now seem suspicious.

    I’m thinking that we should be particularly concerned about people who argue that Jesus blessed the relationship between a centurion and his slave boy/ sexual partner.

    The Rev. Dr. William Stayton, director of the Satcher Institute’s Center for Excellence in Sexual Health wrote in his entry “Pederasty in Ancient and Early Christian History” in the 2006 “Human Sexuality: An Encyclopedia,”:

    “There is a story in the gospels of Matthew (8:5-13) and Luke (7:1-10) that most certainly illustrates pederasty as not having a negative value in Jesus’s thought… Since pederastic relationships were so common and accepted in the ancient world of Jesus, it is likely that, as the story indicates, Jesus himself had no problem with the practice of pederasty.”

    The Rev. Dr. Stayton and his Center for Excellence in Sexual Health has funded and will be overseeing the Anglican Communion’s Listening Process. The received the funding from a retired Episcopal priest. Why wasn’t the funding provided directly to the Episcopal Church and instead used to place the Rev. Dr. Stayton in an oversight capacity?

  • http://www.tmatt.net tmatt

    OK, back to journalism, folks.

    Starting to spike away.

  • http://perpetuaofcarthage.blogspot.com Perpetua

    Hi Terry,

    Well, if the Episcopal Church and other progressive churches do have ordained ministers that advocate for pederasty, I think that is a news story and related to the post here.

  • SteveP

    Tmatt—my apologies that you thought my previous posting was off topic. Perhaps I did not write clearly. You asked, “If the religion would be relevant in the case of a Christian conservative, should the religion be relevant in the case of the Christian liberal?” to which I replied in general no, religion is not relevant but in this case yes, religion is relevant. Of course I assumed you were referring to journalistic coverage in your question.

    In that strain, I outlined what I considered to be the scandal to the local denomination, that it was a question of legality rather than morality. Further, the specific denomination has a history of equating legality with morality.

    In short—yes religion is relevant in this case but not along a conservative versus liberal split.

    Again, my apologies for what you found to be offensive or off-topic; I will not use concrete examples in attempting to answer questions posed offhandedly.