Pod people: Can the MSM find centrists in gay-rights wars?

As a journalist, there are few things that I find more interesting than listening to the views of liberal thinkers who ask questions that make liberals nervous, or upset, and conservative thinkers who ask questions that make their fellow conservatives nervous, or upset.


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Unbridled yearning for same-sex marriage

One of the big stories last week was whether the Supreme Court would hear cases regarding marriage law. The court hasn’t said it will hear a marriage law case. But the coverage leading up to that was most telling.


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Whistling in the dark about Islam and reform

Has anyone seen a story in the U.S. press about the opening of France’s first gay-friendly mosque? I’ve not come across anything in the U.S. mainstream media so far, but the story has received a great deal of play from the European press.


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Washington Post's ghostly top 50 list

It’s that time of year when media outlets put out their best of the year lists. I know we’re all waiting with baited breath for the news about who is Time‘s Person Of The Year (come on, Mars Rover! You can do it!).


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Covering Catholics who are more like 'Catholics'

GetReligion readers may recall the case of young Lennon Cihak, who — at the very least — told the Rev. Gary LaMoine (in photo) that he disagreed with the Catholic Church’s teachings on sexual ethics and marriage. Thus, the priest — after long talks with the family — decided that the young man should not be confirmed as a grown-up, loyal Catholic believer.


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Pod people: Manhattan media melancholia

The oh-so familiar provincialism of The New York Times was the principal object of my harrumphing in a recent Crossroads podcast, which was recorded back on Nov. 23. I’ve been wrestling with computer gremlins for several days now, so this is a bit late.


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Quote of the year on Catholics and American politics

I don’t know how you feel about anonymous quotes, but, as a rule, I am opposed to them.


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No Catholics in the new Europe

This is a great country. I’ve been privileged to live and work abroad, but there is no place like America. It’s a cleaner, cheaper, nicer place. Big cars, big hair, the big country — purple mountains majesty, amber waves of grain and all that — makes me proud to be an American. Give me a political landscape dominated by God, guns and gays and I’m happy. Yet, I must admit there are some things Europeans do better than Americans. I take away nothing from the observations made in Philip Jenkins book, “The New Anti-Catholicism, The Last Acceptable Prejudice”, but the Europeans do anti-Catholicism or anti-clericalism much better than we do.


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