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The California Supreme Court, you might have heard, changed my native state’s definition of marriage. Marriage had been defined as the union between one man and one woman. Now marriage is defined as the union between two people of any gender.
The Newsweek headline — “Penthouse Gets Pious” — grabbed me. But the story doesn’t quite deliver. In it, business reporter Jennifer Ordonez’s story argues that internet porn is forcing adult magazines to diversify. Here’s how the story begins:
Do you remember back in December when all hell broke loose because Mike Huckabee put out a television ad wishing Iowans “Merry Christmas” while seated in front of a bookcase that looked like a white cross? There were dozens of broadcast reports and newspaper stories analyzing whether it was proper to evoke a cross in a political ad. Well, apparently crosses are fine in political ads now. And you don’t even have to use the subliminal ones. Barack Obama has been using fliers in southern states that really pound home his Christian bonafides, touting himself as a “committed Christian” who has been “called to Christ.” Kentucky has a primary on Tuesday and the fliers have been sent out far and wide to evangelical voters.
We at Get Religion have urged reporters to use a diversity of sources — a catholicity you might say. Interview activists, church figures, and academics. Scan church documents and laws.
Last February we looked at an intriguing First Amendment story in the Tacoma News Tribune. Reporter Ian Demsky looked at the fallout from a Washington State Department of Corrections settlement decision that gives inmates the right to adhere to two religions at the same time. One priest in particular took a voluntary leave of absence because he couldn’t support the state decision.
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.
Since the 2004 elections, evangelicals’ relations with the Republican Party have been, to say the least, uneasy. The botched nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court, the Bush administration’s lack of interest in pushing for a federal marriage amendment, the initial popularity of Rudy Giuliani as a GOP presidential contender — on these and other issues, the relationship has been less like that of a happily married couple and more like that of quarreling lovers.
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.”
