For this week's Crossroads, host Todd Wilken and I talked about media coverage of changes in New York's marriage laws and why the media isn't more interested in exploring how those changes might affect religious adherents and their institutions. It's been over a week since the legislature voted and I'm a bit surprised we still haven't seen any stories looking at what the change means. We've seen a lot of stories about the affect this might have on large scale political battles and individuals seeking to be married under the new law. We've seen far less, and far less quality coverage, when it comes to potential conflicts or how the law might affect the public lives of people who oppose homosexuality or same-sex marriage. Although the New York Times Sunday magazine did include a lengthy piece reported by religion writer Mark Oppenheimer questioning the marital norm of monogamy, which we will get to shortly.

We hit quite a few other topics at well in this special extended podcast.

There was that Associated Press story where Francis Beckwith was described not as the Catholic that he is but as a Mormon. Since the podcast was recorded, that story was finally corrected.

And we got a bit back into the Religion News Service story about Delta Airlines and the Jews that ultimately was pulled. Likewise, we talked about the story that spread like wildfire about the untrue account of a Jewish court sentencing a dog to death by stoning.

And we hit on the story of St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church, the only church that was destroyed in the September 11 terror attacks. Readers had some excellent thoughts both on angles to explore in that story and explanations as to why it's been undercovered.

We wrapped up with a look at the Yonathan Melaku story and my confusion over why local reporters aren't more interested in his ties to Islamic terror as well as his non-Muslim name.