Same-sex Marriage

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CNN's giant love song to D.E. Paulk and the emerging world of liberal Pentecostalism

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So, did anyone out there in GetReligion reader land manage to make it all the way through that epic CNN.com report entitled "How the Ultimate Scandal Saved One Pastor," focusing on the life and times of the Pentecostal superstar Archbishop Earl Paulk Jr. and his secret son (for years called his nephew) the Rev. D.E. Paulk?

I can understand it if you gave up before the end. The sexual and political politics in this four-act drama are stunningly complex and scandalous and that's the whole point. It's the story of the sins of a megachurch pastor who, within a certain niche of Pentecostalism, became a powerful player in -- the key for CNN, of course -- one political corner of the Religious Right. It's about the sins of the father, literally, and the impact on the son who finally breaks free and becomes his own person, a young hero who slays his own dragons.

Here's the material that sets up the drama:

His life before was so complicated that D.E. simply told curious church visitors who said his name sounded familiar to "Google me."
Google gives part of his story: How the Paulks built the Cathedral of the Holy Spirit at Chapel Hill Harvester Church into one of the nation's first and largest megachurches; how three American presidents honored their church; how the place imploded after the revelation about D.E.'s biological father. But the headlines don't say what happened to D.E. afterward.
How did the revelations affect his relationship with Don Paulk, the man who raised him; the person he still calls dad. Did his uncle, Bishop Paulk, ever apologize? How could D.E. even set foot in church again?
The headlines also don't explain what happened to D.E.'s mother, Clariece. How did she explain her actions to her son and husband? Did the marriage survive? Clariece Paulk, 76, recently told me that she prayed for over 20 years that no one would discover her secret. At times, Bishop Paulk would apprise D.E. from a distance and say to her, "He kind of looks like me in the shoulders."
"I'd be so afraid that somebody would see a picture of him and Donnie Earl at the same age, and I tried to hide the pictures," she said. "I lived in fear, just misery."
D.E.'s story is not just about a scandal. It's about fate. Are we all captive to the arc of our family history, no matter what we do?

Big stuff, requiring lots of photos and thousands of words.


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News story or editorial? Reuters reports on that bill to eliminate all marriage (licenses) in Oklahoma

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In 2001, I became an ordained minister. Sort of.

I served as religion editor for The Oklahoman at the time and wrote a column about my experience:

It says so right there on the certificate with the official gold seal: "Reverend Bobby Ross."
My license from the Universal Life Church in Billings, Mont., came with a note that said, "Thank you for your purchase and God bless."
The best part: This high honor cost me only $29.95.
That's about the same amount Judas Iscariot accepted to betray Jesus Christ, as my friend Glover Shipp pointed out.
Perhaps, though, Shipp is looking at this the wrong way. He's assuming that anyone who offers to make you a "LEGALLY ORDAINED MINISTER in 48 hours!!!!" is a scam artist.
On the other hand, think of all the good I can do now.

Among the good that my ordination allowed me to do: perform weddings. (Sadly, no one ever asked me to provide that service.)

My column noted:

In Texas, your pet hamster can perform a wedding. But before you help someone say "I do" in Oklahoma, you must file credentials with the county clerk.

That piece was written 14 years ago, and I have no idea whether Texas law remains the same. So if you decide to exchange vows in the Lone Star State, you might check with proper government authorities before getting your hamster involved.

I thought about my quickie ordination this week as I read a Reuters editorial — er, news story — on an Oklahoma bill to eliminate government-issued marriage licenses.


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Big news report card: Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) changes definition of marriage to include same-sex couples

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In case you missed it, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) made headlines Tuesday night.

As noted by The Washington Post's Sarah Pulliam Bailey — a former GetReligionista — the denomination voted to change its definition of marriage from "a contract 'between a woman and a man' to being 'between two people, traditionally a man and a woman.'"

In light of the widespread coverage of the Presbyterians' decision, it's time for another "big news report card." 

In today's grades, I'm particularly interested in how the major media covered these factors: the decision itself, the ramifications for the denomination, the reactions of supporters and opponents, and the wider context of American Christianity within which this decision occurs:

• Associated Press: A

Nice work by AP's longtime Godbeat pro, Rachel Zoll, on all the criteria I mentioned.

In particular, Zoll did an excellent job of putting the decision into context:

Although several Protestant denominations have taken significant steps toward recognizing same-sex relationships, only one other major Christian group has endorsed gay marriage churchwide.
In 2005, the 1.1 million-member United Church of Christ became the first major Protestant denomination to back same-sex marriage, urging its individual congregations to develop wedding policies that don't discriminate against couples because of gender.


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Catholic school teacher's blunt Facebook post turns into media free-for-all

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When a Catholic high school theology teacher posted some thoughts on her Facebook page, she never expected that two Hollywood actors and an online lynch mob -- including professionals at several newspapers -- would make her take it down.

So here are the basics. Note that much of the reporting turned into cheerleading for one side of the debate.

Patricia Jannuzzi teaches at Immaculata High School in Somerville, N.J.  When she read an article on theyoungconservatives.com web site about an obscene tweet by gay activist Dan Savage -- posted about presidential hopeful Dr. Ben Carson -- she saw red. She posted a jumbled response on her Facebook page that said in -- in part -- that homosexuals have an “agenda” and “they argue that they are born this way and it is not a choice to get the 14th amendment equal rights protection … bologna.” And that gays “want to reengineer western civ into a slow extinction. We need healthy families with a mother and a father for the sake of humanity!!!!”

 A 2001 graduate of Immaculata saw her post and created a change.org petition calling it “hate speech” and asking for “action” to be taken at Immaculata. One of the 953 people who supported the petition was Greg Bennett, an openly gay 2004 alumnus of the school who once acted in “Real Housewives of New Jersey” and had Jannuzzi as a teacher. He signed the petition and asked his 165,000 Twitter followers to do the same.

Another gay alum, Scott Lyons, got his aunt, actress Susan Sarandon, to weigh in on her Facebook page:


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Oklahoma lawmakers contemplate eliminating all marriage — licenses, that is

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My wife, Tamie, and I lived together for 15 years and brought three precious babies into the world before we finally went to an Oklahoma county courthouse and got our marriage license in 2005. Since our local newspaper publishes the names and addresses of those granted licenses, we were a bit concerned about the scandal our late nuptials might create at church.

To anyone who asked, we shared our funny — and true — story.

That is, we exchanged our wedding vows in my wife's hometown church in 1990. A preacher pronounced us husband and wife. It's just that I graduated from Oklahoma Christian University the day before our wedding, and we ran out of time to get blood tests and complete the official government paperwork before we said "I do." Then we left on our honeymoon. And, well, we just never needed a marriage license until 2005, when it became important for a reason that escapes me now.

Despite our lack of a license, my wife and I — both raised in Churches of Christ — saw our marriage as a sacred commitment, as did our families. Not for a second did we consider living together out of wedlock. To say that religion played a key role in our view of marriage would be a huge understatement.

Perhaps Tamie and I were — besides being young, in love and stupid — 25 years ahead of our time?

Oklahoma lawmakers are making national headlines this week for considering — seriously, it seems — getting the state out of the marriage business.

 


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Concerning that RNS newsletter: 'Two steps forward ...' means what, precisely?

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It doesn't take a doctorate in Mass Communications to grasp that the Internet and other forms of digital technology that have emerged in recent decades have changed many elements of "journalism" as we know it.

Your GetReligionistas have written about this many times during the past 11 years. I guess that's because -- as a guy with a mass-comm master's degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign -- I am pretty obsessed with the whole "technology shapes content" idea.

What changes? You know what I'm talking about.

The WWW is great at narrow-casting information into niches, as opposed to offering broadly stated information for debates in one mass culture. Also, the Internet is open for business 24 hours a day, seven days a week -- yet a business model built on digital advertising cannot sustain the larger newsroom staffs of the past. Thus, there are fewer scribes doing more and more work as they try seize the attention of readers who are surfing past on waves of digital ink.

What to do? Many believe that it's crucial for these digital journalists to write with a sharp "edge" that helps to define their social-media "brands" in order to appeal to loyal readers who agree with their editorial worldview. Thus, the line between news and analysis and old-fashioned editorializing is becoming harder and harder to see.

Meanwhile, information is expensive (think old-school reporters) while opinion is much cheaper (think armies of bloggers, freelance columnists and think-tank public intellectuals). Thus, more opinion and less basic reporting, with on-the-record interviews with articulate voices on both sides of hot-button debates.

This leads me to the following headline, which stopped me dead in my tracks as I marched through my stack of morning emails.

Two steps forward ... then all this


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More slanted coverage, as that brave Nashville evangelical pastor enters the same-sex quagmire

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Same-sex relationships are the new Rubicon for America’s evangelical churches, and judging by much of the news coverage, the outcome has already been decided. Evangelical Protestants in particular haven’t gotten with the program, thus a lot of the news coverage out there reads like advocacy journalism, saying it’s time to wise up. In other words, more Kellerism.

One of the newest pieces out there is an RNS article on a church just south of hip red-state Nashville, certainly a buckle on the Bible Belt. The Rev. Stan Mitchell, pastor of GracePointe Church in Franklin, Tenn., has been agonizing over homosexuality and the Bible for some time. Then he conducted a same-sex marriage without telling his board (yes, this is the church that drew slanted Time coverage, as noted by our own Bobby Ross Jr.).

Then, during Sunday services on Jan. 11, Mitchell announced that the congregation henceforth will be "fully affirming." That is how the reporter described it in the second half of the article, albeit without the quote marks. Here is how it begins:

Pastor Stan Mitchell’s announcement that his evangelical GracePointe Church would fully affirm gay members met with a standing ovation from some, stunned silence from others, but everybody prayed together quietly at the end of it.
A month and a half later, Mitchell routinely receives emails inviting him to kill himself, often including the assurance they were sent in love from other Christians. Half of his 12-member board has left, along with half the average offering and about a third of the weekly attendance — once at 800 to 1,000 people.
He’s met with dozens of disenchanted members and plans to see dozens more, apologizing almost compulsively for his handling of the issue. But there’s no going back, he says. He doesn’t even want to.

Much bad karma ensues.


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Colorado same-sex wedding cake wars: Coverage ranges from 'too hot' to 'too cold' to 'just right'

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First off, my apologies to Goldilocks and the Three Bears. I hate to insert them into Colorado's same-sex wedding cake wars. 

However, their involvement seems appropriate in this case, as I critique media coverage this week that ranges from "too hot" to "too cold" to "just right."

Let's start with an Associated Press story headlined "The growing conflict between religious groups and gay rights advocates":

DENVER — The growing conflict between religious groups and gay-rights advocates over punishments in discrimination cases is playing out in Colorado, with a Democrat-led committing (sic) rejecting Republican proposals aimed at protecting individuals and organizations from complaints.
But what some conservatives view as trying to preserve religious freedom, Democrats and gay-rights advocates see as potentially sanctioning discrimination.
One proposal would have prohibited penalties in discrimination cases if the punishment — such as an order to serve gay couples — violated the beliefs of the accused. Another measure, written broadly, barred government officials from constraining the exercise of religion.

 


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State of the states on same-sex marriage: New York Times actually gets some things right

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We at GetReligion just might be getting a bit soft. Witness the reactions to a New York Times roundup on the same-sex marriage front.

From tmatt: "NYTIMES talks to some conservatives and old liberals in SSM story!"

Bobby Ross Jr. read the Times story, then noted the phrase "so-called conscience protection bill."

Tmatt again: "Small steps! I didn't say it was perfect. But it does seem -- gasp -- that they actually talked to a few people on the moral right."

But I'm the one with the scalpel on this. So let's dissect.

Overall, it's an excellent survey on the campaign to make same-sex marriage the law of the land.  But rather than a mere power struggle between two interest groups -- religious conservatives and gay activists -- the story appears to frame it as a vintage clash of gay rights versus religious beliefs.  

This starts right in the lede:

ATLANTA — As it looks increasingly likely that the Supreme Court will establish a nationwide right to same-sex marriage later this year, state legislatures across the country are taking up bills that would make it easier for businesses and individuals to opt out of serving gay couples on religious grounds.

Not a promising lede for someone who hoped for even-handed coverage. But this article is worth your patience.

The sweeping story bears down on the battles in Arizona, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Georgia, and mentions issues in eight other states more briefly. It points out the wide support in various states for freedom-of-conscience laws, even calling the support "overwhelming" in Arkansas.


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