Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
Californians will vote next month on whether only marriages involving one man and one woman should be recognized. Proponents of the measure have argued in television advertisements that children will be taught about same-sex marriage in public schools and that they will be taught that same-sex marriage is equivalent to traditional marriage.
I think part of the requirement of being a libertarian is that you have to be very suspect of all politicians. Let me make this personal. I once deemed it safer to walk home alone after midnight in my not-the-safest neighborhood rather than accept a ride from one of the senators I was hanging out with. I'm always surprised that people place their hopes and dreams in the political class considering how completely corrupt and immoral the group is. I'm sure there are exceptions, but how do you know which ones are the exception, you know?
All of which is to say, we have another sex scandal on our hands! And in a delicious twist, it involves the congressman who was elected to replace Mark Foley after he was embroiled in that famous 2006 sex scandal linked to Congressional pages and IM software (not in that order).
This new scandal hasn't gotten a lot of media coverage but ABC News has had some coverage. In a blog post that featured the image depicted above, the story mentioned lots of juicy details:
So what do you do if you’re a religion reporter during the post-season of Major League Baseball? If you’re the Boston Globe‘s Michael Paulson, you write a fantastic feature combining baseball and religion:
Back when I worked in retail management, secret shoppers were the bane of our existence. The corporation would hire people to come in and rate our service, orderliness, appearance, etc. You never knew when they were coming and their results seemed to vary wildly. You’d be praised on a day when you knew you and your team weren’t giving their best and rated viciously on another day when you were slammed and keeping everything going despite numerous obstacles.
Remember the Episcopal priest who became a Muslim? We discussed coverage of her story here and here last year.
Given all the coverage of the New Atheist movement, I’m surprised we haven’t seen more religion beat stories on average atheists. Peter Smith of the Louisville Courier-Journal wrote a story about local atheists and freethinkers a few weeks ago that has been getting republished throughout the country. It begins with an anecdote about a woman who experienced a feeling of euphoria when she became an atheist a few years ago:
Whenever really dramatic news breaks, I wish I could see how the future will play out for the various parties. But reporters rarely write about the ongoing lives of people who made news in the past.
I wasn’t able to take very much Latin in junior high school, but I’m pretty sure that it was the most important subject I studied. It helped immeasurably with learning other foreign languages, English grammar and vocabulary in general. When our children are ready, we’ll be sending them* to a school where Latin is a major component.
So there are literally hundreds of stories out there about Pope Benedict XVI launching a marathon Bible reading this week. And the vast majority have the Who (The Pope), the What (marathon Bible reading session), the Where (the Vatican) and the When (right now). This Agence France-Presse story is representative. This Telegraph story was a bit better, but just touched on it.
