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Tale of three stories: Confusion over same-sex marriage in Alabama

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Few things, it seems, bring out a newspaper's attitudes like a rebellious state. Three papers produced varying accounts of Alabama's reaction to court orders on same-sex marriage.

And we're not even talking about those bad ol' Eastern liberal rags. We're talking good ol' Sunbelt newspapers like the Los Angeles Times, the Dallas Morning News and the Montgomery Advertiser.

The basic facts are the same: A U.S. District Court judge said Alabama's nine-year-old constitutional amendment for traditional marriage was itself unconstitutional. The state asked for a stay, but the U.S. Supreme Court refused. Then, on the urging of Chief Justice Roy Moore, most probate judges stopped issuing marriage licenses altogether.

Now come the different lenses. First up is the Times, which favored colorful writing over consistency:

Like lightning striking a Southern oak, the conflict over gay marriage split the judges of this state Monday.
Some followed the prodding of their own state Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore, who ordered probate judges not to obey a U.S. District Court order striking down Alabama's same-sex marriage ban.
Others agreed with the federal court; they started marrying people in the morning.
Then, there were those who hired their own lawyers — and tried to stand in the middle as best they could.

Trying to grasp that passage is like trying to picture a lightning bolt splitting a tree three ways.


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Social media says Chapel Hill shootings linked to anti-Muslim hate; what did social media say about the gunman's beliefs?

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Here is what we know at this point.

Three young Muslim students were gunned down in Chapel Hill, N.C. All three were clearly identified, in the omnipresent world of social media, as Muslims -- including two sisters pictured wearing head coverings.

Some people -- many using #MuslimLivesMatter -- are convinced that the shootings are receiving relatively little news-media attention because the victims are Muslims.

The message: This was a crime based on hatred of Muslims, so cover it that way.

Other people are convinced that the crime is receiving a relatively small amount of coverage because 46-year-old Craig Stephen Hicks, the man charged with three counts of first-degree murder, has a social-media profile indicating that he is an outspoken atheist, a cultural liberal and, thus, a progressive in religious terms.

The message: The gunman had the wrong beliefs to provoke a storm of coverage in the secular media. This was, after all, a guy with a Facebook profile image proclaiming "Atheists for Equality" and a long list of "likes" that included dozens of pro-atheism sites, scores of anti-conservative sites and numerous pro-gay-rights sites. A few random choices from the list: The Southern Poverty Law Center, Scouts for Equality, Have a Gay Day, the Freedom From Religion Foundation and Fundies Say the Darndest Things.

So what is happening in the actual coverage?


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Kayla Mueller's faith: What was God's role in life of American killed while being held by Islamic State?

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Is there a holy ghost in media coverage of Kayla Mueller's life?

The 26-year-old American was killed while being held hostage by Islamic State extremists, her family and the White House confirmed Tuesday.

In a letter released by her family and cited frequently in news reports, Mueller referred to "our creator" and mentioned God five times.

The Los Angeles Times highlighted a portion of the letter:

“By God and by your prayers I have felt tenderly cradled in freefall. I have been shown in darkness, light [and] have learned that even in prison, one can be free,” she wrote. “I am grateful. I have come to see that there is good in every situation, sometimes we just have to look for it.”

Meanwhile, Reuters noted:

Mueller's family quoted from another letter she sent her father on his birthday in 2011: "I will always seek God. Some people find God in church. Some people find God in nature. Some people find God in love; I find God in suffering. I've known for some time what my life's work is, using my hands as tools to relieve suffering."

But journalists struggled to uncover more concrete details about Mueller's specific faith and religious background. 

Some major news organizations — including The Associated Press, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post — avoided any mention of God at all.


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How did the Mitt Romney era affect the status of the Mormon church?

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How did the Mitt Romney era affect the status of the Mormon church?

KEN ASKS:

What has been the impact on Mormons of the burst of intense attention they received during the Romney presidential bids?

THE RELIGION GUY ANSWERS:

This was posted before Mitt Romney took himself out of the Republicans’ crowded 2016 steeplechase. But this is a good moment to analyze the era when his presidential ambitions brought new attention to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (nicknamed “Mormon” or “LDS”).

Not that he’s disappearing. Romney remains a player and conceivable vice president, Treasury secretary, or other official if the G.O.P. wins next year -- unless his church appoints him one of its ruling “General Authorities” in Salt Lake City.

Romney is no run-of-the-mill churchgoer but has held responsible posts in this clergy-less denomination that’s led locally by laymen serving part-time. He has been the “bishop” (equivalent of a pastor) in his own “ward” (congregation) and president of the Boston-area “stake” (akin to a Catholic or Episcopal bishop). He is an ordained “high priest,” the LDS ecclesiastical rank below patriarch, seventy and apostle.

The former governor’s prominence should have burnished the faith’s P.R. image. He personifies attractive virtues Mormons most like to display: clean living, hard work, probity, public spirit (e.g. taking charge to save the 2002 Winter Olympics), generosity in donations and private help, patriotism and faithful commitment to church and family.


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Dear Time editors: Why couldn't Obama talk about his liberal Christian faith in 2008?

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Well, here is a real shocker. Not.

Still, this Time headline is precisely the kind of thing that creates water-cooler buzz here inside the D.C. Beltway:

Axelrod: Obama Misled Nation When He Opposed Gay Marriage In 2008

The key words in this story are, of course, "misled," "conceal," "modified," "evolving" and "deception." The word "lied" is not brought into play. Here is the top of the story, leading up to the soundbite that everyone will be discussing:

Barack Obama misled Americans for his own political benefit when he claimed in the 2008 election to oppose same sex marriage for religious reasons, his former political strategist David Axelrod writes in a new book, Believer: My Forty Years in Politics.

Axelrod writes that he knew Obama was in favor of same-sex marriages during the first presidential campaign, even as Obama publicly said he only supported civil unions, not full marriages. Axelrod also admits to counseling Obama to conceal that position for political reasons. “Opposition to gay marriage was particularly strong in the black church, and as he ran for higher office, he grudgingly accepted the counsel of more pragmatic folks like me, and modified his position to support civil unions rather than marriage, which he would term a ‘sacred union,’ ” Axelrod writes.
“I’m just not very good at bullshitting,” Obama told Axelrod, after an event where he stated his opposition to same-sex marriage, according to the book.

Now, three cheers for the Time team for using quoted material that cited the specific hook -- it's a religion hook, of course -- that led to this political decision.


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Washington Post delves deeper into whether Jews will flee France in wake of kosher market attack

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This is a rather huge story.

In a 1,300-word report, The Washington Post delves deeper into whether Jews will flee France in the wake of last month's kosher market attack:

SAINT-MANDÉ, France — For all her 30 years, Jennifer Sebag has lived in a community that embodies everything modern Europe is supposed to be.
Inclusive, integrated, peaceful and prosperous, the elegant city of Saint-Mandé — hard against Paris’s eastern fringe — has been a haven for Jews like Sebag whose parents and grandparents were driven from their native North Africa decades ago by anti-Semitism.
“I’ve always told everyone that here, we are very protected. It’s like a small village,” Sebag said.
But in an instant on the afternoon of Jan. 9, Sebag’s refuge became a target. A gunman who would later say he was acting on behalf of the Islamic State walked into her neighborhood’s kosher market and opened fire, launching a siege that would leave four hostages dead — all of them Jewish.
A month later, the Jews of Saint-Mandé are planning for a possible exodus from what had once appeared to be the promised land.

This piece provides additional insight in an ongoing story.


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'Kellerism' comes to Alabama same-sex marriage wars, care of a political blast by New York Times

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Heads up. We have a "Kellerism" reference on another blog today, including a shout-out for a GetReligion response.

But before we get to that, we need to look at what's going on down in Alabama right now, including that New York Times report that proclaimed:

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. -- Amid conflicting signals from federal courts and the chief justice of Alabama’s Supreme Court, some Alabama counties began granting marriage licenses to same-sex couples on Monday in a legal showdown with echoes of the battles over desegregation in the 1960s.
In major county seats like Birmingham, Montgomery and Huntsville, same-sex couples lined up outside courthouses as they opened and emerged smiling after being wed.

As you would imagine, in the newspaper of record's own words, its "reporters have fanned out across Alabama to explore and explain how the same-sex marriage process is playing out in a handful of locations." The commitment is obvious and demonstrated at length.

Later in the story readers are told, with a hint of religion language thrown in:


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Yo, Baltimore Sun: Are 'green funerals' completely different than ancient 'traditional' religious rites?

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It is really, really, really hard to write a story about death, dying, funerals and burial rites without discussing, even for a few lines, the centuries of religious life and doctrine linked to those topics. However, the editorial team at The Baltimore Sun -- the newspaper that lands in my front yard -- has managed to pull off this difficult task.

The hipper than hip topic, of course, was "green funerals." This is a subject that has been covered here before at GetReligion, in this age in which rising numbers of idealistic, post-Woodstock Baby Boomers are planning their funerals or, well, taking part in them.

Are there secular or non-traditionally religious people -- seekers or even "nones" -- who are interested in "green" rites and burials? Of course there are.

But what about traditional religious believers? As I wrote, concerning an earlier almost religion-free story in The New York Times:

... Is this simple funeral trend found only in alternative forms of faith and non-faith? The story makes this trend sound like a march away from traditional forms of religious faith, as opposed to a rejection of American business as usual. That simply isn't the case.
I'm Eastern Orthodox and the simple funeral is becoming the norm, among many in my church. Then there are the various orders of Catholic monks who are making simple, beautiful, natural and very traditional caskets.
Business is, well, booming as you know what generation moves into its final decades. In other words, where is the rest of the story? Or, in the context of New York City, are simple funerals not as hip as green funerals? Maybe it was time to dig a bit deeper.

Well, this Sun report -- "Seeking a natural end in rural Baltimore County" -- is way, way, way more faith-free than that Times effort. It is so religion-free that, to my eyes, this must have been a conscious editorial decision.


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Boko Haram atrocities get taut, fierce coverage from New York Times

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When confronted with repeated viciousness, it's tempting to grow weary and turn away. But the New York Times has done the opposite with its coverage of the atrocities by Boko Haram:

MAIDUGURI, Nigeria — They came in the dead of night, their faces covered, riding on motorcycles and in pickup trucks, shouting “Allahu akbar” and firing their weapons.
“They started with the shootings; then came the beheadings,” said Hussaini M. Bukar, 25, who fled after Boko Haram fighters stormed his town in northern Nigeria. “They said, ‘Where are the unbelievers among you?’ ”
Women and girls were systematically imprisoned in houses, held until Boko Haram extracted the ones it had chosen for “marriage” or other purposes.

The feature is 1,500 words, but it's written in taut, fierce, fast-reading fashion, told largely through the eyes and ears of refugees. The sourcing is astonishingly thorough, with direct quotes from at least 14 refugees plus the governor of Borno, the state where Maiduguri is the capital.

While it would be hard to check their stories -- Boko Haram leaders often don’t show their faces, let alone allow interviews -- the accounts dovetail into a systematic, brutal picture:


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