Gender

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Podcast: Culture Wars 2023 -- As it turns out, traditional Muslims have children too

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Podcast: Culture Wars 2023 -- As it turns out, traditional Muslims have children too

Gentle readers, please allow me to start with a short anecdote from about 15 years ago, during the years when I was teaching journalism a few blocks from the U.S. Capitol.

I attended a typical off-the-record think tank forum in which lawyers from church-state groups were talking about rising tensions in public, taxpayer funded, institutions. At one point, someone asked a question that sounded something like this: What should public-schools leaders do when approached by parents who want opt-out choices for their children when faced with class activities that clash with the teachings of their faith?

The question, of course, was linked to tensions between public-school leaders and evangelicals, and maybe traditional Catholics (“traditional” in the FBI meaning of the word).

One lawyer gave an answer that was way ahead of its time: School administrators should look at these people and do everything they can to pretend that these parents are Muslims. In other words, pretend these parents are part of a minority faith that public officials respect (Muslims), as opposed to part of a larger faith group that administrators distrust, fear and possibly even loathe (evangelicals).

This was one of two Beltway anecdotes I shared during this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in), which focused on a Washington Post story that I have been thinking about during the past week or two. That headline: “Hundreds of Md. parents protest lessons they say offend their faiths.” The Post team appears to have worked hard to keep the main news hook out of that headline and even the lede.

Hundreds of parents demonstrated outside the Montgomery County Board of Education’s meeting … demanding that Maryland’s largest school district allow them to shield their children from books and lessons that contain LGBTQ+ characters.

Still in the dark, right? Keep reading:

The crowd was filled largely with Muslim and Ethiopian Orthodox parents, who say the school system is violating their religious rights protected under the First Amendment by not providing an opt-out. Three families have filed a lawsuit against the school system.


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What the Italian press is reporting about the looming Vatican Synod of Synodality

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What the Italian press is reporting about the looming Vatican Synod of Synodality

One of the biggest religion-beat stories of the year is currently playing out and most people are probably unaware of it, due to lack of mainstream-news updates. Maybe this story is too Catholic?

I say this because the three-year process that began in 2021 known as the Synod of Synodality is reaching its most contentious and potentially dramatic stage. I wrote back in March 2022 that the mainstream press had largely ignored the story.

This is what I wrote at the time:

A phrase like Synod on Synodality certainly won’t ever make it into a punchy headline, not even at The New York Post.

The secular press isn’t all that interested in doctrinal issues that don’t appeal to a larger audience or lack a political connection. It’s the reason why the pope going after the Latin Mass got little mainstream news attention while bishops batting President Joe Biden about receiving Holy Communion got tons of coverage. Then again, the synod will almost certainly contain strong LGBTQ news hooks.

Here we are 16 months later and the mainstream press is still largely ignoring the story. Our own tmatt had a very detailed podcast and post regarding one hook with the Synod of Synodality (#Vatican3) and the issues swirling around Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich’s past comments and current role, in which he will help shape synod debates about some of its most controversial issues.

Now, it’s quite interesting that the mainstream press — in the United States, at least — has largely been silent regarding a very important new synod document.

In fact, the Vatican’s release of the Instrumentum Laboris (Latin for “working document”) head of October’s Synod of Bishops makes clear that it’s “not a document of the church’s Magisterium.” The 50-page document, however, has plenty to say about the issues Pope Francis has openly discussed over the past decade regarding female deacons and gay unions.  

In Italy, mainstream-news coverage of the pope and Vatican affairs are a staple of daily coverage — akin to White House reporting in the United States.


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American College of Pediatricians: How many times must we hear about its religious ties?

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American College of Pediatricians: How many times must we hear about its religious ties?

It started as a data breach at a faith-friendly medical group that opposes transgender therapies and same-sex parenting.

It morphed into a quasi-investigative piece co-written by three Washington Post reporters and one contributor –- none of them a religion specialist –- about “conservative doctors” who have influenced public discussion about abortion and transgender individuals.

When I first saw this, I wondered what issue was so important that it required a triple byline, especially since the story was originally broken by other outlets weeks before. The following piece — “Documents show how conservative doctors influenced abortion, trans rights” — ran last week in the Post:

A small group of conservative doctors has sought to shape the nation’s most contentious policies on abortion and transgender rights by promoting views rejected by the medical establishment as scientific fact, according to documents reviewed by The Washington Post that describe the group’s internal strategies.

Actually, the entire “medical establishment” doesn’t reject these views. This is another example of erasing an important debate.

The records show that after long struggling to attract members, the American College of Pediatricians gained outsize political influence in recent years, primarily by using conservative media as a megaphone in its quest to position the group as a reputable source of information.

The organization has successfully lobbied since 2021 for laws in more than a half-dozen states that ban gender-affirming care for transgender youths, with its representatives testifying before state legislatures against the guidelines recommended by mainstream medical groups, according to its records. It gained further national prominence this year as one of the plaintiffs in the federal lawsuit to limit access to mifepristone, a key abortion drug.

That put it in the media crosshairs, for sure.

Despite efforts to invoke the credibility of the medical profession, the American College of Pediatricians is viewed with skepticism by the medical establishment. For years, the group has presented statistics and talking points to state legislators, public school officials and the American public as settled science while internal documents emphasize how religion and morality influence its positions.


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DeSantis' Catholic faith goes under the media microscope before '24 presidential primaries

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DeSantis' Catholic faith goes under the media microscope before '24 presidential primaries

The presidential race is just starting to heat up. While it may still be early, candidates are popping up every few days and announcing their intention to seek the Republican nomination in 2024.

Among those seeking to dislodge the early favorite — polling shows that to be former President Donald Trump — is Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. This is the same man who has become something of a conservative darling in recent years for relentlessly going after “woke” ideology. His battle with Disney is an example of a culture war fight DeSantis hasn’t been afraid to address in recent years.

DeSantis has been criticized for many things, from whether his wife Casey is “a problem” to confusion over the pronunciation of his last name.

As the past weeks have shown, DeSantis’ foray into national politics has come shone a brighter media spotlight on him, his family and beliefs.

Yes, Christian beliefs. It’s true that DeSantis is seen as possibly the only candidate in the ever-growing GOP primary field capable of defeating Trump and possibly even President Joe Biden.

This increased scrutiny — both by the mainstream and religious press — has included whether or not DeSantis, a Catholic, is personally devout. I tackled this very topic more than a year ago in a post that ran under the headline “As Florida’s DeSantis wages culture war, his Catholic faith isn’t news — unless it’s used to attack him.”

Here was the main thrust of my argument:


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What's missing from that 'conservatives pounce' New York Times sermon on trans fights?

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What's missing from that 'conservatives pounce' New York Times sermon on trans fights?

At this point in journalism history, does anyone expect to read New York Times coverage of events and trends on the Religious Right and find a single sentence that presents interesting, provocative information — drawn from interviews with cultural conservatives — that supports that point of view?

OK, #TriggerWarning. This post assumes that, when dealing with hot-button issues, journalists should present information that accurately represents the views of people on both sides of those debates. Here is another way of stating that: Stories about controversial, divisive issues should contain information that make people on each sides uncomfortable.

This brings us to that recent Times piece with this headline: “How a Campaign Against Transgender Rights Mobilized Conservatives.” This is a classic case of the “conservatives pounce” trend in which news stories are defined in terms of conservative responses to a national trend, with next to zero discussions of the origins and nature of the trend itself.

Before we get to the Times sermon on this topic, let’s back up a bit and consider some background information. Here is a byte from a Reuters report:

In 2021, about 42,000 children and teens across the United States received a diagnosis of gender dysphoria, nearly triple the number in 2017, according to data Komodo compiled for Reuters. Gender dysphoria is defined as the distress caused by a discrepancy between a person’s gender identity and the one assigned to them at birth.

Overall, the analysis found that at least 121,882 children ages 6 to 17 were diagnosed with gender dysphoria from 2017 through 2021.

Here’s another look at the general trend, which includes a few hints at the wider debates:

The number of young people who identify as transgender has nearly doubled in recent years, according to a new report that captures a stark generational shift and emerging societal embrace of a diversity of gender identities.

The analysis, relying on government health surveys conducted from 2017 to 2020, estimated that 1.4 percent of 13- to 17-year-olds and 1.3 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds were transgender, compared with about 0.5 percent of all adults. Those figures illustrated a significant rise since the researchers’ previous report in 2017, though the analyses used different methods.


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Will someone please tell editors at the Washington Post how to cover protests fairly?

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Will someone please tell editors at the Washington Post how to cover protests fairly?

Recently I saw that the Washington Post was running a story about drag queens, so I began reading it until I realized it was sheer puffery on behalf of the author and undisguised bigotry against some unnamed religious protestors.

Then I looked up the name of the reporter who’d written this piece and I saw she was the same one who wrote a lyrical ode to a woman who was organizing demonstrations outside the home of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavannaugh.

We typically don’t criticize reporters by name here at GetReligion unless the offense is truly bad and there are consistent patterns. We focus on the stilted point of view; the things left unsaid; the side that got ignored. But when the reporter does the same thing over and over again, it’s time to say enough.

I’ve reached that point with Post reporter Ellie Silverman, who covers protests and activism.  Both these topics involve conflict; both sides of a conflict have real live people in their midst and these people deserve a hearing, no matter how much the reporter may personally feel about a matter.

Silverman doesn’t appear to get that concept.

We all have covered movements and public events that require us to interview participants with which we disagree. The mark of a professional is be adept enough at covering the matter, neither side knows how you feel about the topic.

This isn’t the case with Silverman’s stories. In her latest, she focuses on drag queens and, obviously, her inability to understand why religious folks have a problem with drag-queen performances for children:

Lily Pastor knew who she was and wanted to celebrate it. So, last month, she joined about 50 other volunteers to turn a Capitol Hill sidewalk into a rainbow-filled dance party outside Crazy Aunt Helen’s, a restaurant that was hosting a story time event with a drag queen.

Anti-trans protesters had gathered across the street and were deriding hormone therapy, a treatment that provided Pastor a way to feel more like herself. But Pastor said standing alongside the people she met — a trans man, a queer teacher, straight allies — was empowering.


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Podcast: Was the attack on a conservative Presbyterian school in Nashville a religion story?

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Podcast: Was the attack on a conservative Presbyterian school in Nashville a religion story?

Was the attack on the elementary school at Nashville’s Covenant Presbyterian Church a religion-news story?

Of course it was, for at least four reasons that we discussed during this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in).

(1) It was an attack on a conservative Christian school at a conservative Presbyterian church in a city that is often called the buckle fn the Bible Belt (although locals know that the Nashville establishment, especially in media, is left of center).

(2) Religious groups have played a major role in Tennessee debates about parental rights, education and LGBTQ issues. What does that have to do with the shooting? Hold that thought.

(3) Religious groups have played a major role in discussions of gun-control legislation in Tennessee and, in this case, it is important to avoid political labels such as “liberal” and “conservative” in that discussion.

(4) The young adult who attacked the Covenant School was a former student there. Audrey Hale had recently identified as Aiden Hale in social media, with male pronouns. Hale was still living in a conservative Christian home, with a mother who both was a strong advocate of gun control and on the staff of Village Chapel in Nashville.

What else do news readers know about the shooter? That depends — in this new age of partisan, advocacy media — on which news organizations a reader follows. In most mainstream coverage, even in Nashville, questions about the life and beliefs of the shooter have all but vanished.

Consider this short paragraph late, late in a Religion News Service follow-up report: “Grief, fear haunt Nashville as residents gather to mourn in wake of Covenant shooting.”

Very little is known about the shooter, a former student at Covenant who was killed by police. The shooter reportedly left a manifesto that has not been made public. 

Really? “Very” little?


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Heeding the Nashville shooter's own voice: Do journalists want the 'manifesto' released?

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Heeding the Nashville shooter's own voice: Do journalists want the 'manifesto' released?

Once again, we return to that mantra from old-school journalism — “who,” “what,” “when,” “where,” “why” and “how.”

When covering the murders at Nashville’s Covenant Presbyterian Church private school, journalists already know that the shooter wanted the public to know the answer to the “why” question.

Moments before shooting open the school’s doors, the person previously known as Audrey Hale, who chose the name “Aiden” in social media, sent a haunting and strategic message to a friend. Some timelines suggest that the shooter sent this message while parked in the church’s parking lot.

The contents of the message are highly relevant to news coverage of the shootings. Readers: Have you seen these words quoted in your local, regional and national news sources? Hale wrote:

“This is my last goodbye.

“I love you (heart) See you again in another life Audrey (Aiden)”

Later, Hale added:

“My family doesn’t know what I’m about to do

“One day this will make more sense. I’ve left more than enough evidence behind

“But something bad is about to happen.”

Public officials have made it clear that the shooter left behind a “manifesto,” as well as highly detailed plans for the attack on the school (school leaders have said Hale attended 4th and 5th grade there). The manifesto text is almost certainly what Hale was describing with the words, “One day this will make more sense. I’ve left more than enough evidence behind.”

Under normal circumstances, journalists would be doing everything that they can to answer the “why” question in this case, including calling for the release of Hale’s manifesto text and other materials linked to the attack. But these are not normal circumstances.


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Time to step up the mainstream coverage of transgender debates within U.S. religion

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Time to step up the mainstream coverage of transgender debates within U.S. religion

News about transgender issues tends to deal with women’s athletic competitions and shelters, pronouns, girls’ locker rooms, public school sex education, competing rights claims (with parents on both sides of the dates) and resulting political and legal disputes.

There’s been less coverage of medical morality, especially concerning under-aged youths, and hardly any about how various religious groups understand gender and why.

Journalists should take notice when four vigorous arguments on the religious aspect appear in the space of just six days, as follows.

March 20: The leaders of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops authorized publication (.pdf here) of an important but little-reported transgender policy. It declares that Catholic health-care agencies “must not” perform or help develop chemical or surgical procedures to transform a person’s bodily characteristics into those of the opposite sex.

The stated reasons are theological and moral. Key quotes: “We did not create human nature; it is a gift from a loving Creator,” so human dignity requires “genuine respect for this created order.” Sexual differentiation is a reality “willed by God” and a “ fundamental aspect of existence as a human being.”

Therefore, surgical and chemical techniques to switch a patient’s sexual characteristics, or puberty blockers to halt youths’ natural development, “are not morally justified.” To the bishops, such interventions are “injurious to the true flourishing of the human person” and violate doctors’ basic moral maxim to “do no harm.”


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