Arlene's Flowers

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News-media theater? Seattle Pacific University sues state attorney general in LGBTQ fracas

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News-media theater? Seattle Pacific University sues state attorney general in LGBTQ fracas

Well, at least the Seattle Times ran the piece atop A-1.

The topic: Leaders at Seattle Pacific University, an evangelical Christian campus, had sued Washington State Attorney Gen. Bob Ferguson, essentially for interfering with their religious rights.

Bob Ferguson, for those of you who don’t live in Washington state, is an attack dog for the legal and cultural left. This is the guy who went after the owner of Arlene’s Flowers, the florist shop in south-central Washington that faced years of litigation after the owner declined to arrange flowers for a gay friend’s wedding. Ferguson went after owner Barronelle Stutzman like she was the devil incarnate, suing her professionally and personally in a case that bounced back and forth between the Supreme Court and lower courts, finally getting settled late last year.

Sensing they were in his crosshairs, SPU decided to strike first. From the Seattle Times this past Saturday:

Seattle Pacific University has filed suit against state Attorney General Bob Ferguson, charging that his investigation into possible hiring discrimination against LGBTQ+ people violates the school’s constitutionally protected right to religious freedom.

“The attorney general is wielding state power to interfere with the
religious beliefs of a religious university, and a church, whose beliefs he disagrees with,” reads the 22-page complaint, filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Tacoma.

Ferguson fired back in a Friday statement that SPU’s lawsuit “demonstrates that the university believes it is above the law to such an extraordinary degree that it is shielded from answering basic questions from my office regarding the university’s compliance with state law.”

SPU has been in the news recently because of a large group of students who’ve been holding a sit-in on campus this past spring to protest the school’s refusal to hire actively gay faculty. The school’s policy is that employees must confine their sexual activity within heterosexual marriage, thus honoring the school’s doctrinal statement of identity.

In a militantly secular and pro-gay city like Seattle, that’s an open declaration of war. The fact that SPU is a private religious institution that should be allowed to defend its belief system never comes across in the articles I’ve been reading about this controversy.


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Coverage of the Arlene's Flowers story may be over, but many more cases are on the way

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Coverage of the Arlene's Flowers story may be over, but many more cases are on the way

Last week, a famous set of court cases: Arlene’s Flowers v. State of Washington and Ingersoll and Freed v. Arlene’s Flowers, Inc., was settled, allowing both sides to retreat with some feeling of vindication.

The case concerned Barronelle Stutzman, owner of a flower shop in eastern Washington state who was friends with a local gay male couple — but who refused to provide flowers for their same-sex wedding because of her traditional Christian beliefs about marriage.

The gay couple sued her and then the state attorney general, Bob Ferguson, also sued her, saying she couldn’t discriminate on basis of religion. It wasn’t about discrimination, she said. After all, she’d served gay customers before and had employed gay florists in her shop. But her religious beliefs gave her no choice but to refuse to create floral arrangements for the wedding rite.

The case went to the U.S. Supreme Court. The high court, which had just ruled on a similar Colorado case, Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, remanded it back to Washington state for further consideration in light of their favorable decision on behalf of the owner of the cake shop. But, true to form for those of us living in this ultra-blue state, the Washington Supreme Court ruled again against Stutzman.

The case returned to the U.S. Supreme Court, where Justices Neil Gorsuch, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas agreed to take the case. However, that was one justice short of what was needed. (An essay at First Things asked questions about why certain other conservative justices bailed on taking this case).

Now 77 and more than ready to retire, Stutzman settled this month, paying Robert Ingersoll, one of the two men, $5,000 and freeing herself of additional legal costs. You may remember that she raised some $174,000 through GoFundMe before the managers of the website rejected her beliefs and shut her down.

Here's how the Tri City Herald, the local paper, covered the Stutzman’s finale:


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Once again, U.S. Supreme Court chooses to punt on a major religious liberty case

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Once again, U.S. Supreme Court chooses to punt on a major religious liberty case

Florist Barronelle Stutzman and Robert Ingersoll have shared many details from the 2013 conversation that changed their lives and, perhaps, trends in First Amendment law.

For nine years, Ingersoll was a loyal customer at Arlene's Flowers in Richland, Wash., and that included special work Stutzman did for Valentine's Day and anniversaries with his partner Curt Freed. Then, a year after the state legalized same-sex marriages, Ingersoll asked her to design the flower arrangements for his wedding.

Stutzman took his hand, Ingersoll recalled, and said: "You know I love you dearly. I think you are a wonderful person, but my religion doesn't allow me to do this."

In a written statement to the Christian Science Monitor, Ingersoll wrote: "While trying to remain composed, I was … flooded with emotions and disbelief of what just happened." He knew many Christians rejected gay marriage but was stunned to learn this was true for Stutzman.

As stated in recent U.S. Supreme Court documents: "Barronelle Stutzman is a Christian artist who imagines, designs and creates floral art. … She cannot take part in or create custom art that celebrates sacred ceremonies that violate her faith."

This legal drama appears to have ended with Stutzman's second trip to the high court and its July 2 refusal to review a Washington Supreme Court decision the drew a red line between a citizen's right to hold religious beliefs and the right to freely exercise these beliefs in public life. Supreme Court justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch backed a review, but lacked a fourth vote.

"This was shocking" to religious conservatives "because Barronelle seemed to have so many favorable facts on her side," said Andrew T. Walker, who teaches ethics at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Stutzman is a 76-year-old grandmother and great-grandmother who faces the loss of her small business and her retirement savings. She has employed gay staffers. She helped Ingersoll find another designer for his wedding flowers. In the progressive Northwest, her Southern Baptist faith clearly makes her part of a religious minority.

"Barronelle is a heretic because she has clashed with today's version of progressivism," said Walker.


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This Kentucky printer won't make gay pride T-shirts. Is sexual discrimination or religious freedom key?

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Arlene’s Flowers.

Masterpiece Cakeshop.

And yes, Hands On Originals, the T-shirt shop that will be the focus of today’s discussion.

All of these businesses — in Washington state, Colorado and Kentucky — have been the subject of past GetReligion posts exploring media coverage of the intersection of sexual discrimination and religious freedom.

Often, the gay-rights side receives preferential coverage on this topic. News reports frequently focus on the “refusal of service” aspect as opposed to sincere claims of free speech and religion. But what about the Lexington Herald-Review story that we’ll critique today?

Does it reflect both sides? Does it treat everyone fairly? Does it make the clear the competing legal arguments?

Yes, yes and yes.

The lede explains the history:

More than seven years after a Lexington shop refused to make T-shirts for the 2012 Lexington Pride Festival, the Kentucky Supreme Court will hear arguments Friday about whether or not the company violated the city’s Fairness Ordinance.

Before the case began moving through the court system, the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Human Right’s Commission accused the business of violating the ordinance that prohibits discrimination. In 2015, Fayette County Circuit Court Judge James Ishmael reversed the commission’s decision, saying there was no violation.

The Kentucky Court of Appeals upheld Ishmael’s ruling in 2017 with a 2-1 vote.


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Three questions for Dallas Morning News re: slanted coverage of traditional wedding venue

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It’s a tough time for the Dallas Morning News. Earlier this month, the Texas newspaper laid off 43 people in its newsroom and other parts of the company, citing declines in revenue. (Strangely, the same paper posted ads later in the month seeking to hire a city hall reporter and an aviation reporter.)

Here at GetReligion, we frequently lament the demise of what was — once upon a time — one of the nation’s premier news organizations for covering religion, with a handful of full-time Godbeat pros and a weekly stand-alone faith section.

I remain a paid subscriber, even though the Dallas Morning News’ skimpy and often uninformed (read: no religion beat specialist) coverage of the Dallas-Fort Worth area’s massive faith community repeatedly frustrates me.

The paper’s publisher recently acknowledged the problem:

We've heard from many readers that the role of religion in society deserves more coverage. So we're also launching a new initiative called Faith Forum, articles focusing on how faith informs major decisions in people's lives. A panel of North Texas faith leaders has agreed to advise on topics and contribute articles. The essays will not appear on any particular schedule, but as news warrants.

At the same time, the reference to “essays” gives the impression that the Dallas Morning News thinks it can cover religion with reader-submitted opinion pieces as opposed to news stories produced by actual journalists.

After that long introduction, let me get to the point of this post: Wednesday’s Metro & Business cover (yes, they’re one section after the recent belt-tightening) featured a story with this print headline:

Venue turns away gay couple, cites God’s design for marriage

That sounds like a religion story, right?


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When profiling ADF's Kristin Waggoner, why not include facts about her Pentecostal roots?

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In late 2005, back in my Washington Times days, I visited the Scottsdale, Ariz., offices of Alliance Defending Freedom, the legal firm that is best known today for litigating Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission and a wave of other important religious-liberty cases before the Supreme Court.

I was very much aware of them, as they were beginning to outdo other stalwarts  -- such as the Rutherford Institute and Jay Sekulow’s American Center for Law and Justice -- in the Christian legal arena. I was researching a piece on ways legal groups were mounting annual campaigns to “defend Christmas,” which ran here. (My byline has been removed, but that is my piece. At the time, the ADF was known as the Alliance Defense Fund.)

It took other media nearly a decade to wake up and discover the ADF. There’s Think Progress’s 2014 piece on the “800-pound Gorilla of the Christian Right;" a similar piece, also in 2014, by the New York Times; a 2016 mention by Politico, a 2017 piece by The Nation on “the Christian legal army” behind the Masterpiece case and more.

So I was interested to see yet another profile on the group; this time a spotlight on Kristin Waggoner, who has litigated ADF’s most high-profile cases this year, by Washington Post feature writer Jessica Contrera.

There were delicious details but major gaps. For example, try to find any specific, factual information about this woman's faith. Some excerpts:

Two days before the announcement of Justice Anthony M. Kennedy’s retirement, a woman who stood to gain from it was on the steps of the Supreme Court once again. Kristen Waggoner’s blond bob was perfectly styled with humidity-fighting paste she’d slicked onto it that morning at the Trump hotel. Her 5-foot frame was heightened by a pair of nude pumps, despite a months-old ankle fracture in need of surgery. On her wrist was a silver bracelet she’d worn nonstop since Dec. 5, 2017, the day she marched up these iconic steps, stood before the justices and argued that a Christian baker could legally refuse to create a cake for a gay couple’s wedding.

Her job was to be the legal mind and public face of Alliance Defending Freedom., an Arizona-based Christian conservative legal nonprofit better known as ADF. ...

Then follows some back story, then a pivot to Waggoner’s personal life.


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Don't let the headline fool you: USA Today's story on Masterpiece Cakeshop case is a tasty read

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When I started in journalism — back when cavemen and Terry Mattingly roamed the earth — reporters at major newspapers typically didn't write their own headlines.

They'd file their story to an assigning editor, who would give it a first read, ask questions, make revisions and eventually ship it down the line, either to another assigning editor or to the copy desk. It was not unusual for a handful of editors to handle a story — particularly a major one — before it hit the press and landed on readers' driveways before sunup.

The copy desk — often late at night — would check for grammar, spelling and Associated Press style errors. And at some point, a slot editor would place the story on a page with a headline that could be any number of lines and columns, depending on the ads around it.

Before the days of easy fixes online, the copy editors saved reporters from egregious and embarrassing mistakes in smelly black ink. But yes, sometimes, those same editors — under deadline pressure — came up with headlines that were, um, less than representative of what the story actually said.

So a common defense of the writer class to headline fails was: "Reporters don't write their own headlines." In other words, don't blame us!

Is that still true? In the web-first age, do writers still depend on editors to craft their headlines? In some cases, yes. But in general, it varies. So I have no idea who wrote the headline on the USA Today story I want to highlight today.

But I will say this: The newspaper's story on the Masterpiece Cakeshop case (click here if you somehow have no idea what I'm talking about) is interesting and informative.

The headline? Not so much:

Same-sex marriage foes stick together despite long odds

Blah.

That's not really what the story is about. 


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As Supreme Court bites into same-sex wedding cake dispute, how to tell good media coverage from bad

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What a busy day on the religion front for the U.S. Supreme Court!

Here's how Sarah Pulliam Bailey, Washington Post religion writer and former GetReligionista, put it in a public post on her Facebook page:

In case you missed it, the high court sided with a church in an important religious liberty case, it allowed Donald J. Trump's travel ban to take effect, and it will hear a case involving a wedding cake baker.

Oh, is that all?

Seriously, I won't attempt to cover all three of those major stories in one post. I'll save the Trinity Lutheran case and the refugee travel decision for another day. But I will take a quick bite of wedding cake and hit a few high points on media coverage of Colorado baker Jack Phillips.

Actually, on second thought, why don't I just keep it simple and stick to one high point? Because it's one that so many news organizations have such a difficult time grasping. And yes, it's one that will be extremely familiar to regular readers of GetReligion.

I'm talking about the specific way that journalists choose to frame the Masterpiece Cakeshop case (and similar religious liberty disputes, such as the one involving Barronelle Stutzman, the sole owner of Arlene's Flowers in Richland, Wash.).

See if you notice a difference — however subtle — between the following two ledes today.


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With The New Yorker, you can have your cake and gain insight into flowers and same-sex weddings, too

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If you've followed the religious liberty headlines of recent years, you're familiar with Jack Phillips of Masterpiece Cakeshop in Lakewood, Colo., and Barronelle Stutzman of Arlene’s Flowers, in Richland, Wash.

The New Yorker has a piece out this week that references both.

Now, if you're a regular GetReligion reader, you may wonder: Is The New Yorker even news? After all, our journalism-focused website avoids critiquing advocacy reporting and opinion pieces. The answer is that sometimes The New Yorker is news, and other times it isn't.

In this case, it is.

And it's good news. I'm not talking about the subject matter, mind you. I'm referring to the fairness and quality of the journalism.

In a Twitter post, LGBT Map described The New Yorker story as a "helpful overview of the high stakes in this case" (meaning, the Masterpiece Cakeshop case). And the president of Come Reason Ministries characterized it as "a fairly well balanced summary of the legal questions surrounding cake bakers & gay weddings." I agree with both of those tweets.

I'll highlight three things that struck me about this story, which contemplates whether the U.S. Supreme Court might take up the case of either Phillips or Stutzman:


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