People

NPR's balancing act

National Public Radio’s ombudsman reports on a controversy over its March 5 package on same-sex marriage. On that day (the day that the California Supreme Court heard arguments about rescinding the Prop. 8 vote) Morning Edition ran a 4.5-minute interview with San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, one of the more prominent civic leaders in support of same-sex marriage. They balanced that story out with a piece on the targeting of Prop. 8 supporters.


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Meet BJP's rising star

In the April issue of The Atlantic, Robert D. Kaplan has written an informative and sometimes chilling profile of Narendra Modi, chief minister of the northwestern state of Gujarat. Modi is important because of his increasing influence within the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, and allegations that he helped encourage Hindu riots against Muslims in 2002.


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Archbishop Chaput analyzes the media

Yesterday Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput addressed a gathering of top religion journalists at the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life in Washington, D.C. His speech was billed as a discussion on the political obligations of Catholics but he also spent a great deal of time discussing the strengths and weaknesses of media coverage. I had the privilege of attending, while also getting to put the names of reporters we discuss here with their faces.


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Buddhists, Jews and orgasms

If you’re one of those rare individuals who is interested in the topic of sex, you may enjoy Patricia Leigh Brown and Carol Pogash’s story in the Sunday New York Times about a co-ed live-in commune dedicated to the female orgasm.


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Holy St. Padraig, pray for us

I have no idea how this national-angle story ended up in the Waco Tribune-Herald — in a city that is not exactly a major center for Roman Catholic culture and news, unless we are talking about Baylor University wars over the role of faith in higher education. But I fear that there really is something to this story, because it’s, well, so logical in this day and age.


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Obama and the pro-life left (again)

For Christians in the West, Easter is not that far away and a strange combination of politicos and professional pew observers inside the DC Beltway are turning up the heat on the Obama family church watch.


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Hilarity, culture war ensue over Tyler Perry

Benjamin Svetkey, Margeau Watson and Alynda Wheat have written an impressive feature story for the March 20 Entertainment Weekly on what the magazine calls “black America’s secret culture war” surrounding playwright and filmmaker Tyler Perry.


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