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The Salt Lake Tribune has been the place to go for news on the FLDS court battles in Texas. While most news organizations have focused on the arguments before the Texas Supreme Court Friday regarding an appellate court’s decision finding the removal of 468 children improper, the Tribune has the goods on how the knives are coming out in this chaotic legal battle, at the heart of which are religious beliefs and values.
Since I have been following the whole Sen. John McCain media drama with the Rev. John Hagee, I thought I’d try to comment on the latest act.
A few weeks ago, I wrote about a Newsday story that examined a trend of older men entering the seminary and becoming ordained in a New York diocese. The otherwise solid story failed to examine whether the bishop had contributed to the influx of seminarians and ordinations. In response, faithful GR reader FW Ken wrote that the personal involvement of the bishop encouraged vocations:
The Los Angeles Times and KTLA conducted a poll of Californians to determine their support for a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage and their feelings about the state Supreme Court’s decision allowing same-sex marriage.
The Texas state appeals court decision that state officials wrongfully took 460 children from their parents at the FLDS ranch to place them in foster care can be summed up in a couple of words: a belief system alone does not justify state action.
Nobody doubts that religion plays a big role in the Iraq War. Yet few reporters, or at least the ones I have read, have shown the extent to which religion plays a role in the conflict.
Yesterday I pointed out the Los Angeles Times‘ rather incomplete survey of “liberal and conservative congregations” on the issue of same-sex marriage. Seventy-five percent of the religious figures who took a position in the article were exuberant about the recent California Supreme Court ruling redefining marriage to include same-sex couples.
Yesterday I complained about a Los Angeles Times story that profiled only one couple — an Evangelical Christian one — to represent the 61 percent of California voters who voted to limit marriage to one man and one woman. It was their support of the traditional definition of marriage that was ruled unconstitutional by the California State Supreme Court last week.
