Eight years ago, more than 60 percent of California voters banned same sex marriage. It was this majority vote that was overturned by the California Supreme Court.
Evangelicals in the mist
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Explaining cybercommunion
Sometimes I’m surprised at how little the media covers the vibrant world of online religion. Snejana Farberov of Columbia News Service penned a piece about, loosely, God and the internet. She describes how churches broadcast their sermons online:
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A fox in the Penthouse
The Newsweek headline — “Penthouse Gets Pious” — grabbed me. But the story doesn’t quite deliver. In it, business reporter Jennifer Ordonez’s story argues that internet porn is forcing adult magazines to diversify. Here’s how the story begins:
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The greatest of these is change
Do you remember back in December when all hell broke loose because Mike Huckabee put out a television ad wishing Iowans “Merry Christmas” while seated in front of a bookcase that looked like a white cross? There were dozens of broadcast reports and newspaper stories analyzing whether it was proper to evoke a cross in a political ad. Well, apparently crosses are fine in political ads now. And you don’t even have to use the subliminal ones. Barack Obama has been using fliers in southern states that really pound home his Christian bonafides, touting himself as a “committed Christian” who has been “called to Christ.” Kentucky has a primary on Tuesday and the fliers have been sent out far and wide to evangelical voters.
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Multiple Choice Answers
Last February we looked at an intriguing First Amendment story in the Tacoma News Tribune. Reporter Ian Demsky looked at the fallout from a Washington State Department of Corrections settlement decision that gives inmates the right to adhere to two religions at the same time. One priest in particular took a voluntary leave of absence because he couldn’t support the state decision.
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True tolerance on Godbeat
Every reader of GetReligion should hurry over to the Columbia Journalism Review and read Tim Townsend’s comprehensive essay about the religion beat titled “Love Thy Neighbor.” I can think of no better window into the world of journalism in general and religion reporting in particular than this article.
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A scandal hits Kansas
In the days preceding and following Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to the United States, we discussed some of the media coverage of whether politicians who publicly advocate for abortion rights would/should/could receive Communion at the papal masses in Washington and New York.
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The War on Whitsunday
Today is Pentecost, one of the three chief festivals in the Western Christian church year. It would be hard to imagine a complete lack of coverage of Christmas or Easter but Pentecost, the least commercial or secularized of the three days, doesn’t receive much media coverage at all. I don’t have any statistics to back this up but I think that media coverage is particularly sparse during those years, like 2008, that the High Holy Day of Mothers coincides with Pentecost.
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Latter-day stars
Sometimes when I’m watching Jeopardy, which I do every night, I like to guess what religion or denomination contestants belong to based on clues — the college they attended, the mission trip they went on, their hometown — from their brief introductions. So Newsweek‘s Sally Atkinson is a reporter after my own heart.
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