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A long, long time ago — so long ago that it predates the creation of my tmatt.net archives — I wrote a column about the birth of the “True Love Waits” movement, an attempt by the Southern Baptist Convention and conservative Christians in a host of other churches to urge teens and young adults to save sex for marriage.
I was out of town this past weekend and have not caught up with that stack of Washington Post newspapers from last week, stacked outside my office. Thus, I missed an essay in the opinion section that ran with the headline, “Not the Party Faithful Anymore.” The author is someone named Mark Stricherz.
There’s a new sex scandal unfolding in the world of evangelicals, a small story that points toward an imporant and very complex larger story.
Since others will bring this up, let me state my bias right up front: I am a pro-life Democrat. I do not think there is any way to find a coalition for meaningful change — any kind of real compromise at all — on abortion policies in this country without the involvement of pro-life liberals, old-school conservative Democrats, mainstream Catholics, Hispanics, African-American clergy and many others who do not feel at home in the Republican Party.
What we have here is a classic example of a valuable Beltway skill — the non-apology apology. Basically, the person in the news says, “I am very sorry that you were offended by something that you thought that I said, when I really said something else.”
It’s a saying that I have heard repeated time and time again by people who study China or work there on issues of human rights: Anything that you want to say about religion in China is true, somewhere in China.
No question about it, this is the picture of the day. Here’s the lede from the New York Times, taking the details right down to the one that will have tongues wagging a bit inside the Beltway:
