One of the big stories last week was whether the Supreme Court would hear cases regarding marriage law. The court hasn’t said it will hear a marriage law case. But the coverage leading up to that was most telling. The person who sent along this Los Angeles Times story remarked that he’d never read a story with so much “yearning” in it: Supreme Court decides this week whether to rule on gay marriage Timing will be at issue as the justices... Read more
Has anyone seen a story in the U.S. press about the opening of France’s first gay-friendly mosque? I’ve not come across anything in the U.S. mainstream media so far, but the story has received a great deal of play from the European press. Now the cynic in me would want to feign shock at the New York Times not having picked up this story as it deals with an issue dear to its heart. However, it is the... Read more
It’s that time of year when media outlets put out their best of the year lists. I know we’re all waiting with baited breath for the news about who is Time‘s Person Of The Year (come on, Mars Rover! You can do it!). The outcome of these lists might be boring. But they do tell us quite a bit about the culture of a given media outlet. Which is why I found John Wilson’s comments about a recent end-of-year list... Read more
GetReligion readers may recall the case of young Lennon Cihak, who — at the very least — told the Rev. Gary LaMoine (in photo) that he disagreed with the Catholic Church’s teachings on sexual ethics and marriage. Thus, the priest — after long talks with the family — decided that the young man should not be confirmed as a grown-up, loyal Catholic believer. Now, it seems that there has been another news development in that headline-grabbing case. This update is,... Read more
The oh-so familiar provincialism of The New York Times was the principal object of my harrumphing in a recent Crossroads podcast, which was recorded back on Nov. 23. I’ve been wrestling with computer gremlins for several days now, so this is a bit late. Host Todd Wilken and I discussed three of my recent GetReligion posts concerning Media Coverage of Adultery, gays in Pakistan, and same-sex marriage in Spain. I was not aware that Missouri-Synod Lutherans — Crossroads is a... Read more
I don’t know how you feel about anonymous quotes, but, as a rule, I am opposed to them. However, when faced with an important anonymous quote, one of the first questions I always ask as a journalist is, “Who is the author of the piece and does this person have the kind of authority and access that makes this anonymous quotation believable”? In this case, the author of the following Our Sunday Visitor column is a person who every religion-beat... Read more
The Associated Press brings us the latest from Cairo: Islamists approved a draft constitution for Egypt early Friday without the participation of liberal and Christian members, seeking to pre-empt a court ruling that could dissolve their panel with a rushed, marathon vote that further inflames the clash between the opposition and President Mohammed Morsi. The move advanced a charter with an Islamist bent that rights experts say could give Muslim clerics oversight over legislation and bring restrictions on freedom of... Read more
This is a great country. I’ve been privileged to live and work abroad, but there is no place like America. It’s a cleaner, cheaper, nicer place. Big cars, big hair, the big country — purple mountains majesty, amber waves of grain and all that — makes me proud to be an American. Give me a political landscape dominated by God, guns and gays and I’m happy. Yet, I must admit there are some things Europeans do better than Americans. I... Read more
When I first heard rumblings about school districts in Texas using locator chips to track students, I assumed it wasn’t true. So my jaw dropped while reading this Associated Press story. It begins: To 15-year-old Andrea Hernandez, the tracking microchip embedded in her student ID card is a “mark of the beast,” sacrilege to her Christian faith – not to mention how it pinpoints her location, even in the school bathroom. But to her budget-reeling San Antonio school district, those... Read more
Anyone who has followed GetReligion for very long knows what the letters WWROD stand for. I mean, the first reference of this kind showed up only a few weeks into the blog’s existence, way back in 2004. WWROD? We’re asking, What Would Richard Ostling Do? Ostling, of course, is the former religion-beat pro at Time, back in the days when that weekly magazine was a force in hard news, and then with the Associated Press. For those of us who... Read more
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