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Lura Groen is a graduate of one of the seminaries that trains pastors for service in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America. But because she refuses to adhere to a chastity requirement, she is not on the approved roster of the ELCA. But a Houston congregation called Groen, a lesbian who is bisexual, to be their pastor anyway.
Generally the newspaper coverage of the Justice Department report on illegal hiring practices has been really good. There is one glaring exception though: the lead in The Washington Post‘s A1 story. You have to wonder where the phrase “Christian lifestyle choices” came from.
So we all know the accepted consensus on abstinence programs: They don’t work. Right? A few months ago, the CDC issued a really shoddy survey claiming that one in four teenage girls had a sexually transmitted disease. The relative standard error was so high (greater than 30 percent) as to render the survey useless.
A reader who is, at the moment, rather upset with the GetReligionistas sent me a story the other day that he wanted us to critique. It’s from the Los Angeles Times and briefly tells the story of the LA police chief’s decision to donate money to the organization that is fighting the ballot initiative against the legalization of gay marriage.
Like everyone else in the world, I love me some Chris Rock. Of his many memorable lines, this one from his “Never Scared” routine — as recounted by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer — is one of my favorites:
We like our readers to know that we pay attention to their emails and tips. So allow me to jump in here for a moment with a quick, laugh-to-keep-from-crying update on that strange New York Times story the other day about the sex shop next door to the Orthodox Jewish synagogue on the Venice Beach boardwalk out in greater Los Angeles. Click here to read the original post on that fascinating free speech conflict.
During my 2003 summer internship at a medium-to-small size daily newspaper in the middle of America, I was assigned to report and write a local version of the latest development of the local Anglican church. The story was about how the local congregations on both sides of the river were facing a “crossroads over gay clergy, teachings.” By the way, those quoted words did not come from my story, but from a headline in Monday’s Detroit Free Press.
The New York Times headed out West the other day for a very interesting look at a clash between traditional faith and modern sensibilities, in a “Los Angeles Journal” entry that ran under the lilting headline, “At the Intersection of Synagogue and Boardwalk, a Feud.”
Like political conventions and track-and-field meets, Papal visits deserve multiple story lines. Focus on one angle and the story is bound to be incomplete. Focus on several angles and the reader will get a broad view of reality.
