Bathroom bills

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Variations on old questions: What do U.S. churches believe on transgender issues?

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Variations on old questions: What do U.S. churches believe on transgender issues?

THE QUESTION:

What do U.S. churches believe on the transgender issue?

THE RELIGION GUY'S ANSWER:

As with American society at large, churches' consideration of the sensitive transgender issue emerged only recently and rather suddenly, compared with their decades-long-debate over whether to leave behind the Christian tradition against sexual activity in gay and lesbian relationships. The religious implications go well beyond political agitation over "bathroom bills," athletic competition or women's shelters.

Transgenderism is part of a broader gender-fluidity movement. A recent survey by the interfaith Religion News Service asked readers to identify themselves as either female, male, transgender, trans woman or MTF, trans man or FTM, intersex, questioning, non-binary, genderqueer, gender fluid, agender or "other."

Among theologically flexible "Mainline" Protestants, a key breakthrough was the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America's September installation of Megan Rohrer of California, its first transgender-identified bishop. Rohrer was barred from the clergy until a 2009 policy change, so was originally ordained by the independent Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries, which works for full LGBT inclusion. (Oddly, that organization suspended Rohrer from membership in December over alleged and unspecified "racist words and actions.")

The United Methodist Church is expected to split this year over the older same-sex disagreement, exactly 50 years after the first floor debate at a governing General Conference. In October, religious media reported the gender transition of the formerly "cisgender" Methodist pastor married to Peggy Johnson, the just-retired bishop for eastern Pennsylvania, Delaware and eastern Maryland. But last month Indiana Methodists removed Pastor Craig Duke from his congregation over drag queen shows and drag education to express solidarity with his daughter, who identifies as pansexual.


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New podcast: Tensions with NCAA and Christian schools? That issue will not go away

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New podcast: Tensions with NCAA and Christian schools? That issue will not go away

A decade or so ago, I had a chance to speak to journalism students at Oral Roberts University. My strongest memories — other than visions of the shiny modernist architecture — center on an unusual moment during a campus chapel service.

There’s nothing unusual about a Christian university having a full-house chapel service. There’s nothing unusual about a student-led praise-rock band blasting out Contemporary Christian Music songs that inspired lots of people to do their share of swaying and dancing.

But here’s the memory. My visit to the campus took place during a meeting of ORU’s board of trustees, who sat together near the front of the auditorium during chapel. Looking down from the balcony, I was surprised to see that (a) many of the trustees were rather young, (b) a much higher than normal number of them were Black or Latino and (c) several were enthusiastically dancing with the students, including at least one in an aisle (the current board doesn’t look quite as young).

All of this was a reminder that much of the racial and cultural diversity at ORU — a major factor in campus life — was and is linked to the school’s roots in charismatic and Pentecostal Christianity, a movement that as been highly multiracial since its birth. Founder Oral Roberts was a famous, and often controversial, leader among charismatic Christians, even though, as an adult, he aligned with the United Methodist Church (which is more conservative in Oklahoma than, let’s say, parts of Illinois and other blue zip codes).

I bring this up because of a recent USA Today “For the Win” column that served as the hook for this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in). Here’s the headline for that piece, which was written by the “race and inclusion editor” at USA Today sports: “Oral Roberts University isn't the feel good March Madness story we need.” Here is a crucial passage:

… As the spotlight grows on Oral Roberts and it reaps the good will, publicity and revenue of a national title run, the university’s deeply bigoted anti-LGBTQ+ polices can’t and shouldn’t be ignored.

Founded by televangelist Oral Roberts in 1963, the Christian school upholds the values and beliefs of its fundamentalist namesake, making it not just a relic of the past, but wholly incompatible with the NCAA’s own stated values of equality and inclusion.


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Fights over First Amendment rights will likely top religion-beat agenda in 2021 and beyond

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What's on the agenda for journalism about religion in the United States in 2021 and beyond?

Ongoing fights about the First Amendment and religious liberty are likely to prove the most newsworthy, but two other themes deserve attention.

A prior Religion Guy Memo here at GetReligion surveyed the competing partisan concepts of "religious freedom" that face the United States and the incoming Joe Biden-Kamala Harris administration, with potential for big conflicts if Democrats win both Senate runoffs in Georgia.

One aspect is religious groups' desire to be exempt from anti-discrimination laws so they can hire doctrinally like-minded employees, while qualifying for federal grants. Lame duck Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia (son of the late Supreme Court justice) wrapped up the Donald Trump years with an important "final rule" to nail down and clarify exemption rights. It goes into effect a dozen days before Biden's inauguration.

Understandably, much news like this was all but ignored by media focused on COVID-19developments and President Trump's remarkable, fruitless efforts to erase the 2020 election returns, supported at the U.S. Supreme Court by 60 percent of House Republicans and the GOP attorneys general of 18 states.

Labor's “final rule” policies could be re-examined in the Biden years. The huge text (.pdf here) provides journalists full documentation on religious employment disputes as seen from the conservative side of the culture wars, and summarizes 109,000 officially filed comments pro and con.

The rule clarifies that exempt groups need not be connected to specific house of worship (as with many schools and Protestant "parachurch" organizations) and that even for-profit companies can qualify if they have "a substantial religious purpose." It states that "religion" covers not only creedal beliefs but "all aspects of religious observance and practice." The rule allows exemptions of religious groups that provide "secular" help, relying on the 9th Circuit appeals ruling in Spencer v. World Vision (read text here).

Importantly, Labor's new rule says religious organizations cannot ignore anti-discrimination protections regarding "sexual orientation" and "gender identity" in situations where "there is no religious basis for the action."


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Totally pro-LGBT slant? Religious liberty in scare quotes? Well, that's Fox News for you ...

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You really have to love readers who pay close attention and are willing to tilt at windmills every now and then.

Consider this note from a GetReligion reader — a radio pro — who kept his skepticism meter turned up, even when looking for liberal bias in a rather unusual place. The headline on this rather ordinary politics-meets-business story (with religion lurking in the background, of course) is: “Amazon opposes anti-LGBT Tennessee legislation amid activist pressure.”

Yes, that’s Fox News for ya. Our pro-journalism reader sent me an email that noted the following:

Fox is usually considered friendly to conservatives, right? Then why isn't there a single quote — count 'em, ZERO — in this story from someone defending the legislation? And why did they do this: "Sponsors of the bills claim they are trying to protect 'religious freedom'"? Scare quotes around "religious freedom"? Really?

The only thing that I disagree with in that note is that I don’t think one needs to be a “conservative” to defend the old-school, liberal model of the press that asked journalists to talk to people on both sides of a hot, divisive issue, while treating their views with respect. Then again, I am also old enough to remember the church-state good old days (that would be the Clinton administration) when you didn’t need to be a “conservative” to back an old-school liberal take on religious liberty (minus the scare quotes).

What does this Fox News story have to say? The problem isn’t that it includes lots of material from LGBT activists who oppose this legislation. That’s a big part of the story. The journalism problem here is that the story totally embraces, as neutral fact, the cultural left’s views on what the legislation would do. This starts right up top:

Amazon has signed a letter opposing a raft of anti-LGBT legislation in Tennessee as the tech giant plans to expand its presence in the business-friendly state.

"Legislation that explicitly or implicitly allows discrimination against LGBT people and their families creates unnecessary liability for talent recruitment and retention, tourism, and corporate investment to the state," the open letter to Tennesse legislators states.


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The sky is falling! The sky is falling! Transgender bathroom bill unveiled in Texas

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Even if you live far from the Lone Star State, the weeping and gnashing of teeth — on the part of the news media — were difficult to miss last week.

Suffice it to say that elite journalists are beside themselves over this: Top Texas Republicans seem intent on heading down the same dangerous, discriminatory path as North Carolina. At least that's the slanted perspective that major newspapers advanced after Thursday's unveiling of a Texas "bathroom bill" (scare quotes courtesy of the news media).

In the following "news story" lede, please help me count how many different ways the Dallas Morning News editorializes its concerns:

AUSTIN -- Cities like Dallas and Austin could have to undo local laws that protect transgender people from discrimination if Texas passes the so-called bathroom bill unveiled Thursday, a proposal panned by the business community that's wreaked havoc on other states' economies.

OK, what's your count?

I got five:

1. "could have to undo local laws"

2. "that protect transgender people from discrimination"

3. "the so-called bathroom bill"

4. "a proposal panned by the business community"

5. "that's wreaked havoc on other states' economies"

Man, I sure hope the Dallas Morning News doesn't waste space by writing a separate editorial on this subject. Just include a note on the opinion page referring to the front-page "news story."


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Year-beginner for 2017: Sarah Pulliam Bailey, and moi, see more battles over religious liberty

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Year-beginner for 2017: Sarah Pulliam Bailey, and moi, see more battles over religious liberty

Ever since the 1980s, I have been telling editors and journalists that conflicts about religious liberty were going cause some of the biggest news stories on the American horizon.

Anyone who has been reading GetReligion since 2004 knows that I've been saying that, over and over. Amen If you listen to this week's "Crossroads" podcast, looking ahead into 2017, you're going to hear more about that. No apologies.

The roots of this concern run back to my graduate-school work in Baylor University's church-state studies program, where -- in 1977-78 -- we could hear the early rumblings of what would become Bob Jones University vs. United States case.

Why is that important? Do you remember this crucial moment in the U.S. Supreme Court Obergefell debates about same-sex marriage?

JUSTICE ALITO: Well, in the Bob Jones case, the Court held that a college was not entitled to tax­ exempt status if it opposed interracial marriage or interracial dating. So would the same apply to a university or a college if it opposed same­-sex marriage?
GENERAL VERRILLI: You know, I, I don't think I can answer that question without knowing more specifics, but it's certainly going to be an issue. I, I don't deny that. I don't deny that, Justice Alito. It is, it is going to be an issue.

That's why religion-beat patriarch Richard Ostling, in his recent pair of memos looking ahead to 2017, stressed that religious-liberty cases -- linked to LGBTQ issues, again -- would remain on the front burner for major American newsrooms. Click here and then here for those two Ostling posts.

You can see the same themes again, over and over, in the recent "Acts of Faith" year-beginner piece at The Washington Post by religion writer Sarah Pulliam Bailey (yes, a former member of the GetReligion team). The headline: "Here’s what we think will be the major religion stories of 2017." Here is the overture:

The new year could be turbulent for religion in America.


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Flush with controversy, 'bathroom bill' coverage skirts faith-based roots of opposition

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There have been many times in recent months that I've thought of the late "philosopher" Rodney King, Jr., whose plaintive "Can we all just get along?" (often misquoted as "can't") resounded across the nation following the 1992 Los Angeles riots. (King, who died four years ago, was the police beating victim; an acquittal in the case involving four officers accused of harming him set off the disturbances.)

Can we all just get along, then, when it comes to gender and bathroom usage? And is there a spiritual and even doctrinal angle -- on one side of this public debate -- that is missing in the latest flush of coverage about North Carolina?

You probably know the background: A move early in 2016 by Charlotte's city council to allow transgender individuals to use the restroom of their choice in any "public accommodation" in the city brought a backlash from the North Carolina legislature, which outlawed such protections statewide. The state ban brought economic and artistic boycotts, and allegedly cost the state hundreds of jobs. The most prominent job loss might have been that of Gov. Pat McCrory, a Republican, who narrowly lost a re-election bid in November.

This week, a "compromise" of sorts was reached: Charlotte said it would repeal its ordinance if the legislature would "fully repeal" HB 2, the much-derided ban. The Charlotte repeal included some phrases legislative Republicans didn't like; the proposed state measures included wording the Democrats didn't like. The result: No repeal of HB2 and uncertainty in Charlotte.
 
So what's the religion angle, you ask? You will barely find it in the media coverage, such as The New York Times, which had reporters in Raleigh and Atlanta on the case:


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What fuels fake news? Major Tennessee newspapers pledge to oppose 'anti-LGBT' bills

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As you would expect, I have been asked more than my share of questions -- in face-to-face encounters and in cyberspace -- about the tsunami of post-Election Day arguments about "fake news."

What do I think of this phenomenon? As it turns out, my answer to this question is directly linked to the work we do here at GetReligion and to my "Journalism Foundations" class that I teach in New York City at The King's College (a class that was also a cornerstone of the old Washington Journalism Center program).

Let me be as brief, because we need to get to a highly relevant case study from The Tennessean in Nashville.

Fake news is real and it's a very dangerous trend in our public discourse. There is fake news on the right, of course, but it also exists on the left (think Rolling Stone). Many Americans are being tempted to consume fake news because they have completely lost trust in the ability of the mainstream press to do accurate, balanced, fair coverage of many of the issues that matter most to people from coast to coast, but especially in the more conservative heartland.

Some of this is political, but we are also talking about "Kellerism" (click here for information on this GetReligion term) and the fact that some elite newsrooms struggle when covering moral, cultural and social issues. Some journalists (thank you Dean Baquet of The New York Times) just don't "get religion."

This brings me to a business story in The Tennessean with this oh-so-typical headline: "Tennessee firms fire warning shot against LGBT laws." Let's see if we can find the key passage that, for many Volunteer State readers, will link directly to their willingness to turn to news sources that mainstream journalists, often with good cause, would call "fake."

The overture, of course, establishes the framing of this 1,300-word report:


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Click, click: Tough calls journalists must make, when facing good news and dumb news

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What we have here is the kind of laugh-to-keep-from-crying conversation that journalists have had for ages and ages. Amen.

However, the topic discussed in the YouTube located at the top of this post -- offering us a chance to touch base with former GetReligionista George Conger (in clericals) -- has become even more common in the digital news era. You know, this current age in which the journalistic temptation to seek out cat videos and "You won't believe what happens next" listicles continues to grow.

Yes, "Anglican Unscripted" is not a mainstream news product. It's an Anglican affairs video podcast with a conservative point of view.

Still, about two minutes in, Conger and co-host Kevin Kallsen (with guitar) start discussing a very important editorial matter, which is why it makes little sense in the internet news era to cover "good" stories that everyone already knows about and "dumb news" that may be humorous or somewhat ironic, but it's so predictable that no one needs to pays attention.

As George states: "Consistently good news, and consistently dumb stories, eventually do not sell."

Let's just say that a key phrase in this discussion is, rather than, "One Lord, one faith, one baptism" is "One Lord, one faith, one toilet."

The key question: Why didn't the following press release -- a letter from the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church and other leads in the denomination -- generate mainstream news coverage, even in liberal settings that would logically support this action? Here's the key passage:


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