Stories about religous and moral controversies are about polity and denominations, protests and politics — but they are also, and mostly, about people. When a writer cares enough to spend time getting to know the people behind the positions, then it is possible (or more possible) for the journalist to let the story unspool invitingly without jumping in there with the exclamation points and scare quotes.
Part of what makes David Van Biema’s recent Time article on Mormons as they enter the mainstream such a terrific read is that it is remarkably nonjudgemental (with one exception, which I’ll get to later.) The narrative is also driven by excellent illustrations and good quotes, as one can see in the lede:
Last November, Jay Pimentel began hearing that people in his neighborhood were receiving letters about him. Pimentel lives in Alameda, Calif., a small, liberal-leaning community hanging off Oakland into the San Francisco Bay. Pimentel, who is a Mormon, had supported Proposition 8, the ballot initiative banning same-sex marriage. And that made him a target. “Dear Neighbor,” the letter began, “Our neighbors, Colleen and Jay Pimentel” — and it gave their address — “contributed $1,500.00 to the Yes on Proposition 8 campaign. NEIGHBORS SHOULD BE AWARE OF THEIR NEIGHBORS’ CHOICES.” The note accused the Pimentels of “obsessing about same-sex marriage.” It listed a variety of local causes that recipients should support — “unlike the Pimentels.”
Pimentel, a lawyer and a lay leader in the small Mormon congregation in Alameda, is markedly even-keeled. Yet the poison-pen note still steams him, even though in May the California Supreme Court validated Prop 8 as constitutional. He is bothered less by the revelation of his monetary contribution, which he stands by, than the fact that the letter’s author didn’t bother to find out that every other Saturday for 15 years, he or someone else from Alameda’s 184-member Mormon ward has delivered a truckload of hot meals to the Midway Shelter for Abused and Homeless Women and Children — one of the organizations the Pimentels allegedly wouldn’t support. “The church does a lot of things in the community we don’t issue press releases about,” he says. “And when people criticize us, we often just take it on the chin. I guess you could say I’m not satisfied with the way we’re seen.”
Could one find a better repudiation of stereotypes about Mormons than an “even-keeled” lawyer doing good works that aren’t usually publicized by his denomination (or by him)? Only then does Van Biema does go on to discuss the “big picture.” He examines public perceptions of Mormons in the aftermath of Proposition 8, and, more important, how Mormons see their own involvement in politics and the larger debate over gay marriage. But he does it mostly from the perspective of Mormon practitioners, scholars and church leaders. He comes as close as an outsider can to writing from the inside out. How many journalists writing about the Mormons (or most other groups) take the time to do that?
It’s not that Van Biema avoids perspective — after all, the magazine is now courting a smaller segment of readers in a fragmented market. Here’s a good example of a sentence where Van Biema takes a step back and gives readers his opinion: “But in figuring out if it should pick up the gauntlet again, the Mormons, who feel they have so much else to offer, must consider whether the issue is becoming a referendum on Mormonism itself.” Yet even when voicing his opinion, he shows a really welcome restraint.
He’s also very helpful in describing those doctrinal places in which Mormons and orthodox Christians differ. His explication of how Mormons perceive salvation in terms of families, not individuals, was particularly useful.
A couple of quibbles — Mormons are not unanimous on the gay marriage question. While Van Biema makes a glancing reference to opposition, he doesn’t go into detail as to why some otherwise traditional Mormons would beg to differ. And, in the interest of fairness, I have to take exception to one particular adjective — when Van Biema describes the counterreaction of gays to the Prop 8 victory as “vicious.” It’s almost the only place in the piece where the writer ramps up the rhetoric instead of exhibiting restraint, and it sticks out like a sore thumb.
But on the whole, Van Biema did what I wish more religion reporters would do — got out of the way and let us make up our own minds.
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Comments (27) |
June 15, 2009, at 12:25 pm
What adjective would you use to describe sending a notice to a whole neighborhood about one couple’s modest contribution to support one side or the other of a proposition? Was this just a friendly letter congratulating the Pimentels for their participation in the democratic process?
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June 15, 2009, at 12:36 pm
I’d prefer that Van Biema described the actions, and generally let us apply our own adjectives. You can’t bleach an article of opinion, but you can let the reader draw his or her conclusions. I’d feel the same way if a journalist was describing the work of a group of conservative activists — who are often the subject of derogatory adjectives!
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June 15, 2009, at 1:46 pm
Interesting that in discussing the Mormon Church and its relationship with Gay people, no gay people are heard from. Nor does Pimentel go into the relationship between his theology of marriage and the secular contract in question in Prop8. The ghost in the story is the relationship between Gays and the Mormon Church, which has a fairly long history.
http://www.mormongulag.com/
This does do a good job of explaining one man’s rationale, and would have worked if it had stuck to that theme. But by dragging in ‘the alienation of Gay Mormons’ with just a noted suicide, the article seemed to be ignoring a subtopic.
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June 15, 2009, at 3:10 pm
I agree that the article is relatively fair and balanced — although the article clearly comes from the right-of-center perspective of Time magazine. A similar article in U.S. News and World Report or Newsweek would have had a very different slant.
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June 15, 2009, at 11:15 pm
I’ve been thinking about your response all evening E. E. and I respectfully disagree. Being objective doesn’t mean never judging, sometimes being objective means calling something what it really is.
It’s plainly evident that at this time in America there is not a consensus on what the nature of marriage truly is. Let’s assume for the sake of argument that the Pimentels’ view of marriage is indeed wrong. That still does not make the actions of the people who sent that letter right. They make the assumption that the Pimentels and others who, in this hypothetical instance, hold an incorrect view of marriage are not honest in their beliefs but rather hold them for impure reasons. If we can’t assume that those who we disagree with politically are honest in their views, then we have no business practicing democracy.
Even if the people who sent that letter hold the correct view of marriage, their intent in sending the letter is wrong. The purpose of such letters is to create fear and label those who disagree with the senders as hateful and not worthy of expressing their honest beliefs publicly. It’s an attempt to stifle free expression and the democratic process of California’s referendum system. Their actions are, in a word, vicious. I support Biema’s use of the word and would do so if he used it to describe similar tactics by the supporters of Proposition 8 as well.
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June 15, 2009, at 11:27 pm
Brian, thanks for your thoughtful response. I began to wonder — would I have responded as strongly to the adjective “vindictive”? I suspect I would have. A lot of my work was for the “mainstream” press with editors who would have been on me like a ton of bricks for using a word with so much reverbration. I’ll keep thinking about what you said, however.
Still, that’s not to say that I don’t agree with you about intent — although I also agree with Dalea that there’s a big ghost in this article. It’s at times like this that I wish the writer would step forth and tell us why he used the word “vicious.” Mr. Van Biema?
By the way, this is the first time I’ve ever heard Time described as center-right. So much depends on where on the specrum you start, I think.
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June 16, 2009, at 5:52 am
If the press is going to use a word like vicious, it should probably be reserved for, I dunno, yobs kicking the **** out of someone. Even then I’m not keen in principle, or rather it would be better to put it as “an attack which the police described as vicious”.
And that’s something in which a value judgement is about as objectively true as it gets. This whole gay-backlash thing i’m much more skeptical of.
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June 16, 2009, at 10:13 am
Stoo, I’m a bit skeptical of the gay-backlash phenomenon myself in that I don’t know how typical of gay activists are the writers of these letters.
But that’s not going to matter much in public perception. As the media cover episodes like this, they are going to draw a new, McCarthyist characterization of the gay-rights activist, one which will cost the movement whatever good will it’s built up over years of clean, clever activism. These letters are a huge mistake.
I fully agree with dalea, BGLTs should have been interviewed expressing a spectrum of support or lack thereof for the letters.
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June 16, 2009, at 12:29 pm
Gay activists come in all shapes, sizes and temperments. And there is no central office directing things. It is a world of freelancers. Which would be clear if Gay people were included in the discussion of Gay people. But the MSM excludes Gay people from this discourse. EE, any idea of why this is policy? GT shows it to be the case over and over.
The argument that we need to be nice little faggots and dykes or we won’t get anywhere is one that makes me angry. It shows a total lack of understanding of how GLBT rights have been advanced over the years. When we behave and act nice, nothing happens. When we get angry and confrontational, when we make a big fuss, that is when we have advanced. Stonewall was a riot. The bar raids ended when there were battles in the street, not when we nicely asked. ACTUP shut down things. This weekend there will be major antiObama actions surrounding an HRC dinner in DC, according to the Gay press. The notion that we need to tend a resevoir of good will is counter factual and ahistorical. People who make it should apologize.
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June 16, 2009, at 12:38 pm
One fact left out of this discussion: much of the anti-Mormon sentiment coming from the GLBT movement is fueled by Gay men who grew up Mormon. If the MSM actually talked with Gay people they could discover this.
The HBO series on Mormons, TrueLove or somesuch, has been cited here as disrespectful of Mormonism. One of the lead writers for the show is Dustin Lance Black, Academy Award winning writer of Milk. Black is an out Gay man who grew up Mormon. And based on that, he is a vocal exMormon. His activism is in his art.
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June 16, 2009, at 12:48 pm
Dalea, I think we tend to write from our own perspectives. Critiquing our own assumptions is hard to do, but the only way to get closer to less-biased journalism. It would be good for journalists to look at their stories and say: who isn’t included who needs to be. Do you think gay MSM (the ones we know about, anyway) tend to include more quotes from gays in stories like this?I
But the camp of those who feel excluded is large, and it does include some strange bedfellows.
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June 16, 2009, at 12:58 pm
As far as I know, there are very few, if any, openly Gay MSM reporters. There are closeted ones who generally do not include Gay voices whenever possible.
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June 16, 2009, at 1:16 pm
dalea, I’m not saying play nice. I’m saying play clean. There’s a difference, and the personal anti-Mormon campaign crosses the line.
To understand why the (admittedly very diffuse) BGLT-rights campaign has a reservoir of good will, contrast it with the anti-BGLT campaigns that have accomplished things like the anti-marriage constitutional amendment here in Ohio in 2004. It was completely divisive, completely based on panic and stereotypes. Nobody respects a campaign like that, even if they fall for it.
I realize you can’t get any BGLT leader with reservations about the personal anti-Mormon campaign into print if the MSM doesn’t interview them. I don’t have any suggestions as to how to deal with that. But I stand by my criticisms of that campaign.
Maybe it’s age. I remember McCarthy, the blacklists and the House Un-American Activities Committee. So do a lot of people.
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June 16, 2009, at 7:33 pm
Time, right of center? Not since the days of Henry Luce.
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June 16, 2009, at 7:51 pm
dalea, re: your comment (6/15 @ 1:46 pm), “Interesting that in discussing the Mormon Church and its relationship with Gay people…”
.
I don’t read the article about this relationship between Mormons and homosexuals — or any other relationship between Mormons and an external group — so much as an examination into the Mormons’ world: our beliefs, values, and motivations. As I read this article, Prop 8 and homosexuals were more of an example than the focus of its inquiry.
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June 16, 2009, at 8:15 pm
Searching around, I believe I have found the rationale for the letters exposing the Pimentels donation to Prop8. Letting everybody in the immediate vicinity know that someone is gay is a standard practice in the Mormon Church.
http://www.affirmation.org/voices/aarons_story.shtml
http://www.lds-mormon.com/legacies.shtml
I should expect that those who condemned the letter senders will also condemn this practice.
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June 16, 2009, at 10:39 pm
E.E. Evans,
Thanks for highlighting this story. I thought it was a very balanced piece that was refreshing for at least trying to see things from the perspective of many pro-Prop 8 Mormons. That’s been a rare thing. Van Beima’s discussion on Mormon perception of a public “referendum” of their faith was very good, but I agree with you that more discussion of the discomfort that many Mormons (including myself) have with the church’s political involvement here would have been helpful.
Dalea,
I echo manaen’s comments regarding the perspective of the article. I also find the examples of LDS/gay issues that you consistently serve up on threads involving Mormons and Prop 8 to be (1) outside the scope of the blog, which focuses on journalism’s interaction with religious issues and (2) entirely foreign to my own experiences with the treatment of gays in the LDS Church.
Offering sites with risible names like “Mormon Gulag” and online anecdotes (which badly mangle LDS excommunication practices and doctrines of perdition and Outer Darkness) as evidence of official Mormon policies and a tu quoque slam against the Pimentels is simply engaging in polemics. There are plenty of other online forums for Mormon bashing.
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June 16, 2009, at 11:49 pm
Perkunas,
The stories that have been discussed concerning Mormons and Prop8 all proceed from the assumption that the issue can be discussed simply in terms of last Fall. I dispute that contention and offer there is a long Gay/Mormon history of interaction and conflict that the press either ignores or is ignorant of. Prop8 saw a battle between Mormons and 2 GLBT factions; first was the general Gay community and second were the Gay exMormons. It is the second group and its interaction with the first that fuel the reaction. So, I, feel, am pointing out a large ommission in the press coverage.
The stories on the sites I linked to show how GLBT, and Gay men in particular, view the Mormon Church based on the direct experiences of those who grew up Mormon. This probably explains the different reaction to different churches involvement that is so often remarked upon here. The press coverage ignores any Gay views that existed before the campaign, which fails to give a full scope to the situation.
The stories are Gay men explaining what happened to them and how they felt about it. They are not meant to be exposition on the mechanics of church operation. They show how GLBT attitudes toward Mormons have been formed, which should be part of responsible news coverage.
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June 17, 2009, at 12:01 am
Without hesitation.
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June 17, 2009, at 1:28 am
“Letting everybody in the immediate vicinity know that someone is gay is a standard practice in the Mormon Church.”
Depends on who you are listening to.
I’ve been a Mormon for all 34 years of my life, and I’ve never - even once - heard of someone being publicly outed as “being gay.” Even when I was in leadership positions.
I suppose it’s possible stuff like that happens in a religious community. On the other hand, your internet sources here may also fall under the heading of “making crap up.”
Which happens, and has happened, to Mormons more than a lot of people are aware.
I thought the Time piece was notable for being the FIRST media account I’ve heard that wasn’t utterly dominated by accounts from angry ex-Mormons, gay Mormons and critics of the LDS Church. So, if people are a little miffed that this particular article is a bit too sympathetic to the LDS, maybe they should just get over it, and realize that sometimes it’s someone else’s turn.
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June 17, 2009, at 7:53 am
Dalea,
But how are these examples relevant to this particular story, which is discussing how the Mormons are reacting to the Prop 8 fallout? As Rathje points out, there are plenty of articles dominated by critics of the LDS Church. I’ve seen plenty from gay, ex-Mormons to undercut your claims that this perspective is omitted.
I’m not a journalist, but I assume that journalistic standards require more substantiation than online statements from “impartial” sites such as Affirmation, LDS-Mormon.com, and Mormon Gulag.
No, you’re using this post as a springboard into launching polemic attacks on the LDS Church and its membership using rather subjective resources.
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June 17, 2009, at 10:24 am
Rathje:
The Time magazine article was hardly the first sympathetic article to Mormons as it relates to their substantial involvement in getting Proposition 8 passed in California. See http://www.prop8-lds.4t.com for 65 articles from a wide range of sources (from the Orange County Register to the Wall Street Journal to the New York Times). There has been plenty of coverage from all angles of this matter.
Jeff
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June 17, 2009, at 1:29 pm
Perkunas says:
No comment.
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June 17, 2009, at 1:37 pm
Of course not, your body of work speaks for itself.
Even if I take at face value your claim to be critiquing the article rather than my faith, the internet sources you offer in the name of “responsible news coverage” are atrocious.
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June 17, 2009, at 3:19 pm
Perkujnas,
If you don’t like the data I find, why not try to refute them instead of making personal attack? Probably because there is no data refuting the links.
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June 17, 2009, at 4:02 pm
Perkunas:
You stated:
Fine. Read the newspaper articles from a wide range of newspapers across the political spectrum (i.e., from the Wall Street Journal and Orange County Register to the New York Times) for articles that have been substantiated and have a high level of journalistic standards. Go to http://www.prop8-lds.4t.com.
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June 17, 2009, at 6:45 pm
Dalea,
I can’t refute them without some hefty investigation, nor do I even need to refute them here. Turning this into a debate as to their veracity and how representative they are of LDS policies toward gay members misses the central point rather badly, and indirectly highlights the problem of using quotes culled from various internet sites (not to mention the point of the OP). Such quotes are unusable by journalists precisely because they are unverifiable and/or untrustworthy.
Affirmation is a credible gay rights advocacy group within the LDS Church, but no journalist is going to use the quote you share without investigation, which I imagine requires actual interviewing of the person and seeking some independent verification of its allegations of Mormon policy. No professional will uncritically accept such a statement from a website as fact. Ditto for the quote from LDS-Mormon (a minor site with which I am familiar and know has some questionable objectivity/reliability as a whole). Information from a site with a name like “Mormon Gulag” should raise immediate red flags; it clearly has an axe to grind and will be treated as inherently untrustworthy for any journalist seeking objectivity. Van Biema would flunk a journalism 101 class for relying on sources like this. In fact, I can’t imagine any professor of a research and writing class accepting these and similar sources from a student. Certainly an editor at Time wouldn’t.
If Van Biema had inserted similar stories based on interviews he’d actually done, I’d have no problem with such an attempt at balance. But your remarkable insistence that what you have offered somehow constitutes reliable material that should have been included as respectable, balanced journalism is - to put it mildly - incredibly puzzling. That you seek to shift to a debate on the specific allegations of these sources only reinforces my perception that you’re interested in bashing rather than how journalists address religion and believers.
Jeff,
I haven’t had time to read all 65 articles on your site, but have read a fair number of them over the past several months. Based on what I recall and a few minutes of skimming, I don’t see anything that rises to the incendiary levels of detailing Mormon nastiness that Dalea apparently believes are necessary for inclusion in order to meet fundamental standards of journalism.
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