At this point, I would say that GetReligion readers have their "scare quotes" detection meters set on 11. (Yes, that's a reference to the movie "Spinal Tap.")
We are, of course, talking about the difference between laws affecting religious liberty, as in decades of court cases centering on the First Amendment's protection of the free exercise of religious convictions, and "religious liberty" laws that clash with evolving cultural standards on sexual liberty. Square quotes equal "so-called" or "allegedly."
You can also have scare quotes on the cultural right, such as conservative websites framing "marriage" in quotation marks in the term same-sex marriage.
Or how about "natural" family planning? Anyone for "physician-assisted suicide"? How about a female Catholic "priest"? Not that long ago you even had editors refusing to print the words "partial-birth abortion" -- even when they were in the name of a bill being debated in Congress.
So here is the latest example that punched buttons for several readers, after the case heated up on Twitter. This is a story straight out of the heart of the religious and cultural tensions in Germany, since we are dealing with an attack by a Syrian refugee on a woman from Poland. Fill in the blanks there.
Here is the headline in question, atop a story published by The Telegraph:
Germany machete attack: Syrian asylum seeker murders 'pregnant' woman in Reutlingen
Say what?