LGBTQ

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GOP establishment in a panic! Guess what kind of leaders the Gray Lady ignores?

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In case you have not noticed, there is a little bit of panic right now spreading among Republican Party leaders. It's in all the newspapers.

If you push the panic to its logical conclusion, one needs to ask how many security professionals will be needed at the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland, just to handle the task of tossing out the party faithful who will be hating on the nominee.

So, precisely WHO is in a #NeverTrump panic?

The most common answer is the "Republican Establishment." This is usually defined as the people who are calling the shots in the party. And who is that? For Trump, that term points toward the big-shot donors, Republicans in Congress, the old-guard Republican experts who are constantly interviewed on television, etc., etc.

The New York Times produced a major piece the other day -- "Inside the Republican Party’s Desperate Mission to Stop Donald Trump" -- about this panic attack and, as you would expect, it was packed with familiar names from the GOP establishment Rolodex. But as I read it, I kept thinking: What is the connection between the party's ESTABLISHMENT and its BASE, the people it can count on to turn out on election day?

To be specific, are there leaders of the GOP BASE who are not considered to be honored members of its ESTABLISHMENT? If so, why is that the case? Might that disconnect have something to do with the Trump insurgency? Hold that thought.

This is long, but you need to read the whole overture (Spot the names!) to get into the mood of the story:

The scenario Karl Rove outlined was bleak.


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Franklin Graham: Another Trump? Yes and no, RNS profile says

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The Religion News Service takes a skeptical but fair-minded look at Franklin Graham -- his beliefs, his politics, his differences from his famed father, Billy Graham -- in a satisfyingly long profile rolled out for Super Tuesday week.

And no, that’s not a chance coincidence, as Godbeat veteran Cathy Lynn Grossman crafts the story:

While Donald Trump campaigns to "Make America great again," Franklin Graham, facing a nation where conservative believers are losing cultural clout, wants to make it Christian again. Week after week, he stands on winter-wind-swept statehouse steps and exhorts crowds like a biblical Nehemiah, warning people to repent to rebuild Jerusalem — with a gospel twist. He urges them to pray first and then vote for Bible-believing evangelical candidates.
But you can’t vote for him.
"No, no!" he is "absolutely not" running for office, said Graham, who tends to rat-a-tat-tat his points.
Instead, he exhorts his listeners to run themselves, starting with local city and county offices. Imagine, he says at every tour stop, the impact on society if "the majority of the school boards were controlled by evangelical Christians."

This sweeping, 2,200-word article is impressive, though not without a couple of issues. It tells of Franklin's rise in building the Samaritan's Purse charity, from a small medical mission into one of the largest disaster relief and development agencies in the U.S. And it adroitly parallels the presidential primary campaigns with Franklin's $10 million "Decision America" barnstorming tour, which often "takes him into town just ahead of a primary or caucus."


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Dude, the St. Louis Cardinals' chaplain is doing awesome, generic religious stuff with team

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Yes, it's Super Tuesday, but let's take a break from all the divisive political talk and focus on something noncontroversial: sports.

Wait, what!?

I kid. I kid.

But with spring training started and the sweet smell of fresh-cut grass in the air, I wanted to call your attention to a recent St. Louis Post-Dispatch column on the team's chaplain:

JUPITER, Fla. — As he promenaded about the Cardinals clubhouse Sunday, this guy had some sort of a magnetism to him, like a popular ex-ballplayer, back to see the boys. But I didn’t recognize this guy from the mental packs and stacks of baseball cards in my brain. Still, the current Cardinals seemed so comfortable chatting with him; clubhouse employees, too.
Who is this guy?
“We’ve got strength coaches, we’ve got hitting coaches, we’ve got pitching coaches,” he’d tell me later. “I just want to be the guy who’s kind of a spiritual coach, really.”
His name is Darrin Patrick, and he’s important to your favorite players.
He’s the Cardinals’ chaplain, and he’s carved a niche for himself here. He’s a disarming dude the players relate to and still admire. He wears jeans. He sports stylish gray glasses that complement his salt-and-pepper stubble.


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It's true: Red and blue Americans literally don't know basic (religion) facts about each other

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Parson me, while I dig into my deep file of GetReligion guilt. In this case, for a week or so I have been trying to decide how to write a post about a Washington Post political feature in which the charts are absolutely crucial to understanding the material I want to discuss.

The graphics themselves are crucial to this post, because they contain information about religious and cultural issues that really didn't make it into the story.

In other words, to put this in GetReligion language, the religion-news "ghost" that I think will interest journalists and news consumers see can be seen more clearly in these charts than in the quotable material in the Post feature itself, which ran with the headline, "What a divided America actually hears when Obama speaks." I cannot, of course, cut and paste the charts over into this post.

So here's what needs to happen. First we will look at the opening of the piece and then you'll need to click over to the Post piece -- which we always urge readers to do anyway, to see context -- and look at the charts themselves. The overture for this long piece is as follows:

As President Obama spoke of the country’s deepening sense of alienation and anger last month, a teacher in Michigan listened, her eyes fixed on the stone-faced Republicans in the House chamber who in her view represented the problem. “Let’s get over the party lines and work together!” she tweeted during the president’s State of the Union address.
In Maryland, a retired lawyer was listening to the exact same words. He, too, was worried about the anger and division gripping the country, but as Obama spoke, his resentment toward the president only swelled. “Hearing him complain about political rancor is frankly nauseating,” he wrote.
The two tweets flashed across the Internet within seconds of each other, each in their own way capturing the country’s mood and the challenge facing the president in his final months in office -- not simply a partisan divide, but a deep mistrust that has become so entrenched that it seems to affect the very way Americans hear the president’s words and see each other.


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NPR puff piece on transgender church leaves lots and lots of predictable gaps

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Recently, I wrote about one unusual congregation (Mark Driscoll's Trinity Church) starting up in Phoenix and now here's another, at the opposite end of the theological pole. The United Church of Christ is one of the country’s most liberal Protestant denominations and one of their clergy seems to have found a way to minister to transsexual youth. This NPR piece is on the church he started back in 2009 that has, to one degree or another, taken off.

I think it’s fine to spotlight unusual ministries. What I have a problem with is when the presentation is totally uncritical. That is, the people who attend this church are always loving. The families they come from -- and other Christians -- are always hateful. There are no complex details.

It starts thus:

Some churches have become inclusive of gays and lesbians, but for transgender people, church can still feel extremely unwelcoming. A congregation in Phoenix is working to change that by focusing on the everyday needs of its members — many of whom are homeless trans youth.
It starts with a free dinner every Sunday night with donated homemade and store-bought dishes.


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Both sides now: USA Today does a decent job covering LGBT flap in a Florida town

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Gol' durn, Florida is always full of surprises. In reporting a controversial school board meeting over LGBT rules, USA Today -- and its state affiliate Florida Today -- stuck pretty much to basic reporting, as opposed to editorial writing.

Even better, the national report is a nearly word-for-word re-post of the original Florida Today story, rather than some Beltway gloss. LGBT matters can get pretty heated, and so can school board meetings. So when they collide, it ain't always easy just to report. These stories do have a flaw or two, but they generally show a satisfying fairness and respect for all sides. We'll look at the flaws in a bit, but the top alone rates a hat tip:

MELBOURNE, Fla. -- Big crowds came out for a Tuesday evening meeting about a proposed non-discrimination and equal employment policy for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people in Brevard Public Schools.
After more than 90 LGBT policy opponents spoke to the school board, the board voted to kill the proposed policy, and said it would hold a public workshop on LGBT issues down the road.
Nearly 100 people signed up to speak at the meeting, and most of those who spoke were in opposition to the LGBT policy.
Friar Demetri Tsigas of Melbourne, a Greek Orthodox priest, said that the opposition of people of faith like himself was something school board members should heed. "You can see the spirit of the town here," Tsigas said.  "This is not San Francisco, folks. This is Brevard County."

Friar? That's off the mark. However, that statement is something of a surprise, starting the quotes with a Greek Orthodox priest, rather than the typical "fundamentalist" who is then held up to scorn.

It is crucial to note the ratio of people attempting to speak in opposition to the policy, as opposed to those who defended it. This was a very tense, charged meeting.


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Yo, New York Times sports team: Bubba Watson isn't afraid to discuss the 'ghost' in his life

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Anyone who follows professional golf knows that Bubba Watson's face is an open book when it comes to joy, sorrow, stress, elation, the whole works. His tear ducts work just fine.

There are reasons for this, of course, and Watson doesn't mind talking about them. At the top of the list is his family and his faith.

Thus, I kind of expected the "On Golf" feature that ran the other day at The New York Times -- "Bubba Watson, a Candid and Sensitive Champion, Shows His Vulnerable Side" -- to deal with these spiritual issues. I mean, after all, the article was very clear that the goal was to get inside this unique personality and find out why he is the man he is. For example, early on, readers are told:

Watson is good company and better copy. Anyone inclined to give him a wide berth must have a pretty narrow view of what makes for interesting conversation. Unfailingly honest and unshakably human, Watson, 37, held a news conference after his victory at the Northern Trust Open that unfurled like an Erhard Seminars Training session.
It was more than 30 minutes of public therapy, during which Watson talked about how he dreads the day when he’ll tell his two small children they’re adopted, the tightrope he walks being a performer with social anxiety -- and, oh, yeah, how the long par putt he drained on 10 at Riviera Country Club on Sunday was the key to his ninth P.G.A. Tour victory since 2010.

At one point, Watson just came right out and admitted that he tends to win, whenever "my head’s in the right spot.”

Right, and then he struggles when his head is not in the right spot. What's the larger point here?


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In battle of gay rights vs. individual conscience in Missouri, here's a surprising winner

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When it comes to political fights pitting gay rights vs. religious freedom, so much mainstream media coverage skews one way.

It's not terribly difficult to guess which way (here at GetReligion, editor Terry Mattingly even coined a special term for it).

This USA Today story this week is typical of the slanted (read: left-leaning) approach that many purportedly balanced news stories take concerning LGBT issues. In this piece, the gay-rights advocates are presented as rational and only concerned about fighting discrimination. The conservative religious types toting Bibles are depicted as "ugly" and "nasty." At least that's my impression after reading the national newspaper's take.

But hey, let's focus on the positive, not the negative, today and critique a solid, well-rounded news story from The Associated Press.

This piece benefits from three important "p" adjectives: Precise language. Proper framing. Purposeful balance.

Let's start at the top:

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — Missouri voters, who were among the first nationally to adopt a constitutional ban on gay marriage, could get a say later this year on whether to grant greater religious protections to some business owners and individuals who object to same-sex marriage.
A proposed constitutional amendment that got its first hearing Tuesday in a Senate committee would prohibit government penalties against those who decline to provide goods or services "of expressional or artistic creation" for same-sex marriage ceremonies and celebrations.
The Missouri measure doesn't list specific types of business people who would be covered — though it comes as bakers, florists and photographers in other states have faced legal challenges for declining to provide services for same-sex weddings.


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A grieving husband. A stirring eulogy. The video that rocked the sports world

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On Friday, I drove from Oklahoma City to Fort Worth, Texas, to visit my parents. Somewhere along Interstate 35 south of the Red River, I flipped the FM dial to a Dallas sports talk station.

I hoped to hear discussion of my favorite team, the Texas Rangers, arriving at spring training and the outlook for the upcoming season.

Instead, I found myself mesmerized by two sports talk hosts focused on faith and forgiveness — and the rousing eulogy that Oklahoma City Thunder assistant coach Monty Williams gave for his wife, Ingrid, on Thursday.

"I'm jealous of someone with that kind of faith," said one of the hosts, as questions of life and death suddenly trumped draft picks, trade deadlines and even the Dallas Cowboys.

In this space 10 days ago, I pointed out holy ghosts in the initial media coverage of Ingrid Williams' death in an Oklahoma City car crash.

My previous post went a little viral, receiving thousands of clicks after Monty Williams' funeral remarks, as folks searched for more details about the family's faith.

The coach's eulogy certainly grabbed the sports world's attention:


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