Pod people: Same-sex marriage on the march

December 9, 2012 By mollie

On this week’s “Crossroads” podcast, host Todd Wilken and I discussed Dave Brubeck’s sacred music and religious life — and how substantive discussion of same were missing from many obituaries about the jazz great. We also discussed the general cheerleading of coverage dealing with same-sex marriage.

The hook for that was the stories leading up to the Supreme Court’s decision about whether to hear the rulings related to California’s Proposition 8 decision. On Friday, as tmatt noted, the court announced it would take up that case, as well as the one related to federal benefits for same-sex couples.

In a post about this tenor of coverage from last week, I wrote

I can’t help but think that the same media that has written for approaching a full decade on one U.S. Senator’s thoughts on a gay-related court case might have a tad more interest in the particulars of an important court ruling with implications for religious exercise, gender roles and kinship. But maybe that’s just me.

There’s still time for the court to say it’s going to take up one of the cases. Let us know if you see any coverage that deviates from the expected narrative.

Reader The Old Bill responded:

Yes, Mollie, it’s you. You think a reporter should report on what is happening, not what he feels should be happening. The press treats a complete change in what marriage has always been as something that has but one side. Anyone who might question this is, as the judge said, irrational and “on the wrong side of history.”

What is reported depends a lot on what is assumed.

I saw no deviation from that standard narrative this weekend in the early reports on the SCOTUS decision. The terminology of one side of the debate has been more or less adopted by the mainstream media. It’s not uncommon to see the phrase “marriage equality” used — outside of quotes, much less scare quotes — in mainstream reports. While those opposed to changes in marriage law say that “same-sex marriage” is an ontological impossibility — akin to saying “square circles” and calling for “shape equality” — the media usually fail to mention this perspective or put it at the end of a story in quotes from the token opposition.

There just hasn’t been any coverage of the substance of arguments against changing marriage law, much less a discussion of the consequences of same, outside of some one-sided enthusiasm. I’m not telling you anything you don’t know if you follow this, no matter your personal views on marriage law. So in the New York Times article announcing the SCOTUS decision, we learn in the fourth paragraph:

The court’s move comes against the backdrop of a rapid shift in public attitudes about same-sex marriage, with recent polls indicating that a majority of Americans support allowing such unions. After the elections last month, the number of states authorizing same-sex marriage increased by half, to nine.

This paragraph comes right after a paragraph saying that the court is to decide whether one of the cases is constitutional, an interesting juxtaposition of popularity and principle. In the 15th paragraph, we get this brief, anodyne quote from someone opposed to changing marriage law:

Brian S. Brown, the president of the National Organization for Marriage, said the court should address the broader question but say no. “What’s at stake,” he said, “is whether the Constitution demands a redefinition of marriage and whether states can even vote on this issue.”

Just interesting.

Also interesting was that the only other next-day story from the New York Times was reported by five reporters and was outspokenly only about one side of the debate. The headline is “Worry Tempers Joy Over Gay Marriage’s Moment in Court.”

The entire article is just quote after quote after quote after quote of people who, like those in the New York Times newsroom, all think the same thing about what the definition of marriage should be. And that’s fine, I guess, but isn’t it weird to not have an article about those people on the other side of the debate?

Do they have worry and joy, too? Do their views matter at all? Why can’t we talk about them in news articles? Why the complete lock-down on just talking to them and hearing from them and learning what they think about this step?

If you have five reporters covering that story, maybe you could peel one or two off to talk to a real-live supporter of traditional marriage laws. Or is it, as the Times public editor put it in her column criticizing the paper for failing to cover the Bradley Manning hearings, “Such decisions seem to say: ‘It’s news when we say it’s news.'”

That’s a lot of power for a paper to hold, but it should be used wisely. There’s nothing to fear from simply hearing from multiple sides of a given issue. Perhaps there’s even much to gain from such a journalistic approach.

On same-sex marriage: What is the chief justice thinking?

December 8, 2012 By tmatt

People who study the dynamics of this U.S. Supreme Court have, from the get-go, assumed two or three things about Chief Justice John Roberts.

First of all, he is a very cautious man, one who is very worried about the prestige of the court and the perception that it is above politics. This is not a man who wants to decide bitter, divisive, hot-button, explosive issues with 5-4 votes.

Roberts does not want to create judicial earthquakes. This is not a jurist who wants to blaze dangerous trails long before it is clear that the American public is ready to walk them. The last thing he wants is another Roe v. Wade, followed by decades of bitterness and civic strife.

Seen from this perspective, the Obamacare decision appeared to be an exception to the rules. While many conservatives called him a traitor, others noted that Roberts did that cautious thing that he does — he backed a narrow decision that made it harder to accuse the court of playing politics. After all, what is unusual about the federal government creating a new form of taxation that affects the whole population?

With that in mind, folks here inside the DC Beltway are asking a rather obvious question about the stunning news that the Supremes are going to address the nation’s hottest and most divisive issues — same-sex marriage and, perhaps, even whether sexual orientation can considered a condition leading to special, protected status for civil-rights claims, similar to race, gender, age, religion, etc. The court has, in the past, avoided a definitive statement on that issue, even in Romer v. Evans.

So the question many are asking: Why would the ever-cautious Roberts want to take on same-sex marriage at this point in the judicial game? Or look at that question from another point of view: Why would liberals on the high court want to take on this issue at this point, at the START of a second Barack Obama term? They know that their hand will only grow stronger in the next four years.

Thus, in recent weeks, most mainstream press coverage — while seeming to yearn for a clear gay-rights victory — has focused so much attention on the voices of liberal experts who were not sure that the timing was right for, well, a judicial earthquake. With all of that in mind, take a look at this Washington Post report, which begins by stating:

The Supreme Court put itself at the center of the nation’s debate over whether gay couples have the same fundamental right to marry as heterosexuals, agreeing Friday to review state and federal efforts to preserve a traditional definition of husband and wife.

In agreeing to hear cases from California and New York, the court raised the possibility of a groundbreaking constitutional decision on whether the right to marry may be limited because of sexual orientation. At the same time, the justices also will have the ability to issue narrower rulings on a subject that continues to divide the American public.

The cases will probably be heard in historic sessions at the court in late March, with decisions to come when the justices finish their work at the end of June.

As you would expect, a key part of this Post story focuses on the pivotal justice on the court — which would be Anthony M. Kennedy, a Republican who leans conservative on most economic issues and to the left on most cultural issues. Is it time for another landmark opinion that proves Kennedy is not one of THOSE Catholics?

The strategic implication is clear and has been for months: Will Roberts be able to prevent another 5-4 earthquake, with Kennedy providing more sweeping prose like the following in his Planned Parenthood v. Casey decision, the famous meaning-of-the-universe passage which he then referenced in the landmark gay-rights case Lawrence v. Texas:

These matters, involving the most intimate and personal choices a person may make in a lifetime, choices central to personal dignity and autonomy, are central to the liberty protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life. Beliefs about these matters could not define the attributes of personhood were they formed under compulsion of the State.

Thus, the Post notes:

Central to the outcome of the term’s signature cases will be Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who normally sides with the court’s conservatives but has written some of the court’s most important cases upholding gay rights. For instance, he wrote the Romer decision that the 9th Circuit used as the template for overturning Prop 8.

But some gay rights activists have worried about asking Kennedy and the court to move too far too quickly on what would be a sea change in the way Americans view marriage.

I was not surprised that, in this early Post story on this explosive topic, there was absolutely zero attention given to religious-liberty concerns. Those discussions will come later, when it will be all but impossible for mainstream newsrooms to avoid them — since religious doctrines and traditions were at the heart of the debates about DOMA and Proposition 8.

But here is what did surprise me about this story. Did I miss something or is one very important name — John Roberts — missing from this report? What will we learn about Roberts and his role in the court taking on this hot-button issue at this particular moment in time?

Trust me. People from coast to coast will want to know the answer to that one. Does Roberts have a plan to protect his beloved court?

Unbridled yearning for same-sex marriage

December 3, 2012 By mollie

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 confer. In the past, the court has been faulted for waiting too long or moving too quickly on recognizing constitutional rights.

You can begin to get the picture in the headline. Apparently the court’s decision has already been made. It’s just a question of whether they will wait too long or move too quickly — or hit it just right in the middle — when they “recognize” same-sex marriage as a constitutional right. Isn’t that remarkable?

I’m always struck by how shallow the coverage of this rather foundational issue is. The issue in newsrooms today isn’t about what the definition of marriage is or what it should be. Newsrooms are not about exploring consequences of changing marriage law, unintended or otherwise. Newsrooms are not about shining light on anything that might in any way cast doubt on whether marriage law should be changed to include same-sex couples.

They’re about providing cheerleading coverage in favor of changing marriage law and negative coverage of those opposed to changing marriage law.

To be fair, many reporters have flat out admitted that they’re not interested in doing journalism regarding marriage law so much as activism. That candor is appreciated. (More here, here, here, here.) But I do wish we had some brave journalists who would rather do journalism than pat themselves on the back about how awesome they are to all agree about changing marriage law. The one-note coverage is, I’m sure, fun and self-affirming within the newsroom, but much less fun to be subjected to as a news consumer. And I’m entirely skeptical about the overall benefit to civil society of journalists treating marriage law in such a manner.

The piece is fine, I guess, if you’re down with the yearning and accept the premise that the court has already deliberated and decided the case. The reporter is a long-time Supreme Court beat guy so maybe he knows something we don’t.

There was one line that made me think of something:

A federal judge in San Francisco struck down Proposition 8 as discriminatory and irrational.

I’m one of those nerds who likes to read court decisions for fun. That decision is a treasure trove of interesting information and well worth a read. For instance, as noted in the story above, the judge says that marriage as traditionally defined is irrational! If you can’t write years’ worth of stories about that, I’m surprised. He decreed that traditional marriage is “an artifact of a time when the genders were seen as having distinct roles in society and in marriage. That time has passed.” In other places, he says that children don’t need mothers. They’re unnecessary to the well-being of the child. (Ditto for fathers, natch, all that matters is two adults, of any sex.) He devoted several pages of the to identifying religion as a prime source of anti-gay animus, listing examples from the Vatican and the Southern Baptist Convention, and noting that 84 percent of weekly churchgoers voted in favor of Prop 8.

It’s amazing stuff, here. And yet there were precious few stories about many of these angles. Particularly few when it came to reflective pieces more than a day or two after the ruling.

I can’t help but think that the same media that has written for approaching a full decade on one U.S. Senator’s thoughts on a gay-related court case might have a tad more interest in the particulars of an important court ruling with implications for religious exercise, gender roles and kinship. But maybe that’s just me.

There’s still time for the court to say it’s going to take up one of the cases. Let us know if you see any coverage that deviates from the expected narrative.

Are evangelicals America’s only real moral conservatives?

July 17, 2014 By tmatt

Nearly a decade ago, the conservative Weekly Standard ran a very newsy story on its cover under this ominous double-decker headline:

Banned in Boston

The coming conflict between same-sex marriage and religious liberty.

The story shocked quite a few people and, behind the scenes, I know that many journalists linked to the religion beat passed it around, in part because so much of its reporting — even in the pages of a consevative magazine — centered on the complex and at times clashing legal views inside gay-rights groups.

The story opened like this:

Catholic Charities of Boston made the announcement on March 10: It was getting out of the adoption business. “We have encountered a dilemma we cannot resolve. … The issue is adoption to same-sex couples.”

It was shocking news. Catholic Charities of Boston, one of the nation’s oldest adoption agencies, had long specialized in finding good homes for hard to place kids. “Catholic Charities was always at the top of the list,” Paula Wisnewski, director of adoption for the Home for Little Wanderers, told the Boston Globe. “It’s a shame because it is certainly going to mean that fewer children from foster care are going to find permanent homes.” Marylou Sudders, president of the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, said simply, “This is a tragedy for kids.”

How did this tragedy happen?

It’s a complicated story.

Please note that this was also a Catholic story. It centered on a conflict between Catholic doctrines and a trend in American life. You can find similar stories about Orthodox Jews, if you dig deep enough. And, of course, you can find stories about conflicts linked to the life and work of evangelical Protestants, such as the owners of Hobby Lobby.

Now, let me stress that this is not a post about gay marriage and it’s not a post about religious liberty (sort of).

This is not even — as is the norm here at GetReligion — a post about a piece of mainstream news writing on a religion news or trend. Instead it’s a post pointing readers toward an Atlantic Monthly essay that, while puzzling, is must reading for people who work on the religion beat or who frequently consume religion news.

So what is so puzzling about this important article?

Things get strange right in the headline:

Is Evangelical Morality Still Acceptable in America?

And here is the opening of this essay by Alan Noble:

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Pod people: White House vs. the Wheaton College covenant

July 6, 2014 By tmatt

From the very beginning, some mainstream news organization have — appropriately so — emphasized that many, if not most, progressive religious organizations have not only supported Obamacare, but the controversial Health & Human Services mandate as well.

This raises a logical question: What are the doctrinal fault lines that are dividing religious groups on the many moral issues linked to the mandate?

Obviously, some groups oppose the mandate — period. Catholics oppose its requirement that all forms of contraception be covered. Then there are evangelicals, such as the Hobby Lobby owners, who have no problem with most forms of birth control, but oppose the so-called morning-after pill and other contraceptives that they believe — scientists are split on the issue — induce abortions.

That would seem to be that. However, there is another moral complication that is affecting many doctrinally defined ministries, non-profits and schools that continue to oppose the mandate. Yes, this is the Little Sisters of the Poor camp, which also includes many schools and universities, such as Wheaton College.

More on that in a moment, since this was the topic that drove this week’s episode of “Crossroads,” the GetReligion podcast. Click here to listen in.

So what is going on with Wheaton, the Little Sisters, et al.?

This brings us back to the infamous “tmatt trio,” those three doctrinal questions that I have long used — as a journalistic tactic — to probe the differences between warring camps inside various churches. Remember the three questions?

(1) Are biblical accounts of the resurrection of Jesus accurate? Did this event really happen?

(2) Is salvation found through Jesus Christ, alone? Was Jesus being literal when he said, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6)?

(3) Is sex outside of marriage a sin?

Think about that third question for a moment. In recent decades, churches have been fighting about the moral status of homosexual acts and same-sex marriage. At times, it’s hard to remember that progressive and orthodox churches are also divided over the moral status of premarital sex and, in a few cases, even extramarital sex (some liberal theologians have argued that the redemptive work of the Holy Spirit can even been seen in some acts of infidelity).

This bring’s us back to Wheaton College and the other ministries, non-profits and schools that do not want to cooperate with the HHS mandate in any way. As I wrote the other day, many:

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NYTimes leans to the right in Christian legal profile?

May 13, 2014 By Bobby Ross Jr.

No, the “socially liberal” New York Times didn’t lean all the way to the right.

But it’s difficult to imagine a conservative Christian legal organization receiving fairer, more serious coverage than the Alliance Defending Freedom did in Monday’s newspaper.

With the headline “Legal Alliance Gains Host of Court Victories for Conservative Christian Movement,” the Times used the group’s major Supreme Court victory last week in the Town of Greece, N.Y., prayer case as a timely news peg:

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Alan Sears, who has run the Christian legal group Alliance Defending Freedom since its founding 20 years ago, turned to a picture of Abraham Lincoln in his office here and noted the decades of blood and tears it took to abolish slavery.

“I think there is no question that one day, this country will again recognize that marriage is between a man and a woman,” said Mr. Sears, a former top official in the Reagan Justice Department.

The comparison may or may not prove apt, but these are heady days for Alliance Defending Freedom, which, with its $40 million annual budget, 40-plus staff lawyers and hundreds of affiliated lawyers, has emerged as the largest legal force of the religious right, arguing hundreds of pro bono cases across the country. It has helped shift the emphasis of religious freedom enshrined in the Constitution. For decades, courts leaned toward keeping religion out of public spaces. Today, thanks to cases won by the alliance and other legal teams focused on Christian causes, the momentum has tilted toward allowing religious practices with fewer restrictions.

A meaty section of the story highlights the Alliance Defending Freedom’s Christian roots:

Alliance Defending Freedom was created by Christian leaders including Bill Bright, the founder of Campus Crusade for Christ, and James C. Dobson Jr., the founder of Focus on the Family. In the early 1990s the groups had watched with growing dismay as secular groups like the American Civil Liberties Union used the courts to ban school prayer and advance abortion rights even as an emerging gay-rights movement threatened, in their view, to upend the country’s social values.

“People of faith were being outgunned in court,” said Mr. Sears, 62, a Roman Catholic in an organization populated with evangelical Protestants. So the group — then called the Alliance Defense Fund — was founded to foster Christian legal firepower.

The new Christian lawyers have proved to be sophisticated litigants in court, wielding constitutional arguments without invoking religion. But outside the courtroom, the group has provoked the enmity of gay-rights advocates, in particular, by expressing harsh views such as those in a book Mr. Sears co-wrote in 2003, “The Homosexual Agenda: Exposing the Principal Threat to Religious Freedom Today.” It describes gay people as “trapped” and gay-rights advocates as bent on creating a nation of “broken families and broken lives.”

I was pleased that the Times contrasted Sears’ Catholic background with the prevalence of evangelical attorneys. That detail intrigued me, and I found myself wanting to know more about that dynamic and how, if at all, it plays into the group’s culture and approach. Alas, the Times story ran only 1,200 words. Granted, that’s a full-length novel by concerning new Associated Press standards, but it’s hardly enough space to cover every angle or conceivable question.

Later in the piece, the Times provides more interesting background:

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Brendan Eich nailed for his generic, private, anti-gay beliefs?

April 4, 2014 By tmatt

Yes, yes, yes, I know. Just try to imagine the mainstream press coverage if Brendan Eich had been a Chick-fil-A manager in, oh, some middle-American enclave like Mission, Kan., who was forced to resign because of his private financial support for gay rights.

No, I am not going there. To put it bluntly, I am waiting for the religion shoe to drop in the whole story of the Mozilla chief executive who was forced to step down because he once donated $1,000 to California’s Proposition 8, a campaign dedicated to defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman.

As one veteran GetReligion reader asked in a private email: “I’m not missing the part where they say he’s Catholic, Mormon, evangelical, whatever, am I? The faster gay marriage becomes accepted, the harder I think it is for someone to be against gay marriage without some driving religious belief.”

Unless I have missed something in the past hour or two, that is not a question that many journalists have been asking. Right now, the framing for this story is that his actions were anti-gay, not pro-something, something doctrinally and legally different.

Over at the normally gay-news-driven New York Times, this story is not receiving major attention. A “Bits” feature in the business pages does provide an interesting summary of the raging debates surrounding this case, including the fact that some liberals — including some in the gay community — are quite upset with the illiberal campaign by many “liberals” to punish Mozilla, while making Eich an untouchable in the highly influential tech world. Here is a key chunk of that report:

Mr. Eich’s departure from the small but influential Mountain View, Calif., company highlights the growing potency of gay-rights advocates in an area that, just a decade ago, seemed all but walled off to their influence: the boardrooms of major corporations. But it is likely to intensify a debate about the role of personal beliefs in the business world and raise questions about the tolerance for conservative views inside a technology industry long dominated by progressive and libertarian voices.

Andrew Sullivan, a prominent gay writer and an early, influential proponent of making same-sex marriage legal, expressed outrage over Mr. Eich’s departure on his popular blog, saying the Mozilla chief had been “scalped by some gay activists.”

“If this is the gay rights movement today — hounding our opponents with a fanaticism more like the religious right than anyone else — then count me out,” Mr. Sullivan wrote.

A number of gay rights advocates pointed out that their organizations did not seek Mr. Eich’s resignation. Evan Wolfson, a leading gay marriage advocate, said that this was a case of “a company deciding who best represents them and their values. There is no monolithic gay rights movement that called for this.”

The article also noted that Eich has consistently stressed, and so far no one has contradicted this, that he was committed to inclusiveness in the Mozilla workplace and had never discriminated. However, he has also asked not to be judged for his “private beliefs.” In a way, that is also interesting in that fierce defenders of the First Amendment have long argued for free expression, even in public (with others, yes, having the right to freely protest in return).

The Times article does note, concerning the clashes between old-school liberals and the new illiberal liberals:

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World Vision finds that new crack in modern evangelicalism

March 27, 2014 By tmatt

So what about that World Vision story? Several things need to be said right up front.

First of all, what we have here is a perfect example of what GetReligion does and doesn’t do. In the past 24 hours all kinds of people have sent me notes asking what “GetReligion thinks” of the World Vision decision. Note: They were asking what we think about the DECISION itself, not the press coverage of that decision.
www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2014/march-web-only/world-vision-why-hiring-gay-christians-same-sex-marriage.html
Well, I was not surprised that many World Vision leaders wanted to take some kind of legal step toward the acceptance of gay marriage. I was surprised that they played that card at this moment in time. I was then surprised that, 24 hours later, they reversed themselves.

But what does all of that have to do with GetReligion? After all, we are interested in the press coverage of this story, as opposed to arguing about the issue behind the story. Again and again let me note: This is not a religion blog, this is a blog about mainstream media coverage of religion news.

So what about the coverage of this story? Four quick reactions on my part:

* It’s rather awkward that the must-read mainstream story about this firestorm was written by Sarah Pulliam Bailey of Religion News Service, a former member of the GetReligion team. More on that in a moment. It also must be noted that the news team at Christianity Today, while operating inside the evangelical world, drove all of the early coverage.

* Frankly, mainstream news outlets have not jumped on the World Vision story to the degree you would expect. Why? Let’s say that, when it comes to religion, journalists are currently focused on the pope, the president and politics. Throw in the Hobby Lobby/Mennonite story at the U.S. Supreme Court and it has been a busy week.

* The World Vision story is, however, causing major earthquakes in cyberspace, with evangelicals and progressive evangelicals tearing each other to pieces. The story is unfolding online, folks. That’s where the action is at this point.

* Finally, gentle readers, if anyone had doubts that there is a doctrinal left wing developing in contemporary evangelicalism, those doubts should be dead and buried at this point. This is probably the most important angle to this sad news event.

So what about the coverage? At this point, in the mainstream, this question leads to the Associated Press. This link is to the version posted at The Washington Post site. Here is the crucial information at the top of the report:

Facing a firestorm of protest, the prominent Christian relief agency World Vision on Wednesday dropped a two-day-old policy that would have allowed the charity to hire Christians in same-sex marriages.

The aid group told supporters in a letter that the board had made a mistake and was returning to its policy requiring celibacy outside of marriage “and faithfulness within the Bible covenant of marriage between a man and a woman.”

“We have listened to you and want to say thank you and to humbly ask for your forgiveness,” the agency said in the letter, signed by World Vision president Richard Stearns and board chairman Jim Bere.

Based in Federal Way, Wash., and started by evangelicals, World Vision has an international operating budget of nearly $1 billion and conducts economic development and emergency relief projects. In a conference call with reporters, Stearns said World Vision had not consulted enough with its partners before announcing the initial policy change. Since Monday, Stearns said the board had heard from major evangelical groups and leaders who had told them they had strayed from their core beliefs.

So what is missing from that?

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