GetReligion
Saturday, April 26, 2025

Atlanta Journal Constitution

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Gays and Georgia: Mainstream media ignore the religious angle

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The gay rights/religious rights battle is back in Georgia, where a religious freedom bill died in the last legislative session. As the next session opens today, mainstream media – some from far away – are watching closely at this embryonic state version of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

The battleground of religious rights versus gay rights is back in Georgia, where a religious freedom bill died in the last legislative session. As the next session opens today, mainstream media – some from far away – are watching closely at this embryonic state version of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

Unfortunately, all of that close watching misses the usual religious ghosts, and other stuff.

How many people have Georgia on their minds? Apparently they do in Portland, Maine, where the Press Herald ran a Tribune News Service advance on the Georgia session. It says RFRA is actually one of three such bills coming up.

But for a news organization once known for its conservatism, the article starts out awfully skewed toward the opposition:

ATLANTA — A public campaign by some of the biggest companies in the world launched Wednesday in Georgia, aimed at assuring gay employees and customers ahead of one of the latest legislative battles over religious freedom and gay rights.
Google, banking giant SunTrust and AT&T joined stalwarts including Delta Air Lines, Home Depot and UPS among nearly 100 businesses and universities that have signed on to the effort so far, which they have jointly dubbed "Georgia Prospers."
It marks the first organized effort by business and education leaders against a "religious liberty" push at the state Capitol that many in the gay community fear could allow discrimination – and that the corporate world fears would make an economic pariah of the Peach State. Religious liberty supporters, however, cast it as a new line of defense to protect people of any religion from interference.

To TNS, then, the important part is not that the bill is back, threefold; it's that corporations say these issues of principle will hurt business. Note also that the article puts "religious liberty" in sarcasm quotes, but not gay rights.


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Food for thought: Diners prefer Chick-fil-A over the competition, or gay rights protesters

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Boycotts typically fail. CNN reconfirmed that maxim this week with the news that Chick-fil-A – hit hard with gay-rights protests a few years ago – ranked first in customer satisfaction among fast-food restaurants.

"Not everyone likes Chick-fil-A's politics, but they sure seem to like the food," CNN Money says, in its article on the American Customer Satisfaction Index Restaurant Report 2015.

The CNN Money article didn't reheat those issues, focusing instead on the numbers. It said the once-embattled chain drew an 86 rating, higher than 17 other companies – including well-known brands like Panera Bread, Pizza Hut and Dunkin Donuts.

The story adds:

The chicken restaurant was the subject of controversy and protests a few years ago after its CEO made remarks that offended the LGBT community.
But that hasn't stopped fans from flocking to its restaurants, and giving it high marks for customer experience.
"It is laser focused on a particular product," said Forrest Morgeson, director of research at ACSI. "It focuses on one thing and does it exceptionally well ... and that is chicken sandwiches."
This is Chick-fil-A's debut on the list and its score is the highest ever achieved in the category.

The restaurant chain was targeted in 2012 by gay protestors who took umbrage at CEO Dan Cathy's quotes about traditional families and biblical values: "We are very much supportive of the family – the biblical definition of the family unit. We are a family-owned business, a family-led business, and we are married to our first wives. We give God thanks for that."


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Atlanta fire chief fired: New York Times uses 'antigay' label, while Washington Post listens to one side

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Here is a question for reporters covering the big story down in Atlanta, where Mayor Kasim Reed has fired Fire Rescue Department Chief Kevin Cochran after he published a book in which it appears that he affirmed centuries of orthodox Christian doctrine on sex and marriage.

There are several issues to examine in some of the main reports, but let's start with the headline in The New York Times: "Atlanta Ousts Fire Chief Who Has Antigay Views."

This raises a crucial question linked to the labeling of religious believers in this day and age. For example: Is Pope Francis "antigay"? This is, of course, the leader of a church that affirms, in its most bulletproof volume of doctrine:

Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex. ... Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that "homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered." They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.

Is that statement officially "antigay," which would make those who affirm the Catechism officially "antigay"? Ditto for millions of Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists and others who embrace traditional, orthodox versions of their faiths.

In other words, at the level of headlines, when are believers being "anti" one thing, as opposed to being "pro" something else?


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Death of the Chick-fil-A patriarch: A classic religion-news story with two sides

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It's safe to say that Chick-fil-A patriarch S. Truett Cathy was famous, or infamous, for two very different reasons with two radically different flocks of people. After his death, mainstream news organizations faced an obvious news question: What's the lede? What's the angle on this remarkable entrepreneur's life that deserved the spotlight at the top of the story?

You can see that struggle in the summary paragraphs near the top of The New York Times obituary:

Mr. Cathy, who died on Monday at 93, was by all appearances a humble Christian man from Georgia with little education who sold a simple sandwich: a breaded, boneless chicken breast on a soft, white, buttered bun with nothing more than a couple of pickles for garnish.
But as the founder of the Chick-fil-A fast-food empire, he was also a billionaire several times over and, as a conservative Christian who ran his business according to his religious principles, he was at once a hero and a symbol of intolerance. Many admired him for closing his outlets on Sundays and speaking out against same-sex marriage. Others vilified his the chain as a symbol of hate.


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All Catholics oppose death penalty and all Baptists favor it?

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In the wake of the nation’s first executions since Oklahoma’s botched lethal injection, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution has an interesting story on a young Republican concerned about the death penalty: Late Tuesday, as the clock approached midnight, Marcus Wellons rode to oblivion on a state-inserted needle, his punishment for the rape and murder of a young Cobb County neighbor 24 years ago.

That same day, Marc Hyden, a 30-year-old confirmed conservative Republican from Marietta, hopped a plane for Washington D.C. Today, he will open a booth at the fifth annual gathering of Ralph Reed’s Faith and Freedom Coalition.

Hyden is a national coordinator for Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty, a two-year-old, GOP-based group that carries tea party suspicion of government into a new but highly logical arena:


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At the Washington Post, even local abortion crime isn't newsworthy

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On May 25, I tweeted out the image at the top of this post with the note “WaPo story about 12 of 16 surgical abortion clinics in MD having a variety of failures gets this headline?”


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'Loving the sinner' in Chick-fil-A gay marriage flap

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An outspoken gay-rights activist and a traditional-marriage-advocating fried-chicken magnate walk into a crowded football stadium and … wait, wait … enjoy the game together.


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