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Sex ed bill in Washington state gets lots of boos but where was the religious community?

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To think from all the photos of the embattled Washington State Gov. Jay Inslee earlier in March, one would think he was locked in a 24-hour battle for the life of his state’s 7.8 million residents. Inslee was seen everywhere as trying to abait a virus whose national epicenter – for about two weeks – was near Seattle.

But Inslee had other pots on the fire that almost no one was reporting on including a bill that mandates sex education for all public school students in Washington state.

Religious folks were very involved in opposing it, but you would have never known that fact by looking at the sparse news coverage.

A story on MyNorthwest.com, the print version of KIRO TV Ch. 7 in Seattle tells us the basics. It’s dated March 7.

A controversial sex education bill was passed by the Washington State Legislature Saturday afternoon.

Despite a passionate fight from Republicans — who at one point added over 200 amendments in the hopes of keeping the bill requiring comprehensive sex health education from coming up for a vote — the legislation cleared its final hurdle and passed in the Senate.

Now, I am not sure why the story doesn’t mention a floor debate that went on until 2 a.m. about the bill with Republicans talking about thousands of emails flooding their inboxes (like close to 5,000) against the bill.


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Salt Lake Tribune's hit piece on Catholic priest departs from its typically even-handed coverage

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I’m used to good journalism coming from the Salt Lake Tribune, including news on the religion beat.

That’s why a recent story posted about a Catholic priest’s new parish assignment has me wondering if reporters ever leave their desks these days to do actual shoe-leather reporting.

The piece I’m singling out could have been — and probably was — done exclusively over the phone.

I’ve left out the first few paragraphs about the mother of one local Catholic family, preferring to focus on the priest in question.

Over the past year in her parish in the foothills of Salt Lake City — which includes St. Ambrose Church and J.E. Cosgriff Memorial Catholic School — problems with priests have riled the small faith community and prompted some, like the Donnellys, to step away.

The previous priest there was charged last fall with patronizing a prostitute. The new priest starting this fall has a history of posting profane things online.

Previous priest Andrzej Skrzypiec, who pleaded no contest, is now being sent to another school. The Rev. Erik Richtsteig, who will replace him at this church, was counseled about his online posts that promote hate of LGBTQ groups and mock women, and will lead weekly Mass for children from 4 years old to 15.

More than 150 parents have signed a petition hoping to block Richtsteig’s move to their parish and school; he’s scheduled to start Thursday.

Various parents have documented Richtsteig’s social media posts.

In one image on his blog, Richtsteig edited an assault rifle into his hands. In a post on Facebook, he said that images shared by LGBTQ individuals in June (which is Pride month) look “like a gnome vomited” and promised he wouldn’t accept a friend request from those with a rainbow filter in their picture.


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A second Houston library drag queen was a child molester and reporters refused to cover it?

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I keep thinking that the controversy involving drag queens reading stories to young children at public libraries will die down. I’ve already written two posts about the national debate and a flare-up in Houston when it was discovered that one of the “queens” was a sex offender.

But more stuff keeps on popping up.

About six weeks after the first sex offender was revealed –- the program was cancelled with promises that this was a mistake that would never be repeated again -– the activist group Mass Resistance has discovered a second sex offender among the Houston “queens.”

LifeSite News ran a story by Mass Resistance about this and although we don’t typically cover activist news media, I’m making an exception here because journalists in the mainstream Texas media have been so derelict on this story. The LifeSite report also includes sources and references to public documents that other journalists could have used as hooks to begin research.

For those of you new to it all, MassResistance activists exposed a Houston Public Library drag queen as a convicted child sex offender in mid-March. Then the Houston Chronicle reported that, despite the protests, the library officials wish to restore drag queen story hour sometime this summer. But Mass Resistance wasn’t done yet.

Now, it turns out that a second Houston Public Library Drag Queen was convicted of multiple sexual assaults against young children, according to records uncovered by Houston MassResistance activists. The man has also written a lurid article describing his work as a transgender prostitute. And he was photographed at a Drag Queen Story Hour (DQSH) event carrying a rubber chicken — a symbol used by homosexuals to indicate a sexual preference for young boys.

This man is part of the local Drag Queen group brought in to do the "Story Hour" events. We now know that local group is part of a bigoted national anti-Catholic Drag Queen organization.

That would be the San Francisco-based Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.


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No First Amendment? In Canada, calling a trans woman a 'biological' man is hate speech

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Whenever I’m looking for news about religion that’s beyond weird, I only have to look north across the border to the latest oddity happening in western Canada.

Canada doesn’t have freedom of speech in the same way we enjoy it down here. Its constitution gives its citizens the right to free speech with “reasonable limits” and its Human Rights Act prohibits the “communication of hate messages.”

And so, if you call a trans woman up there a “biological male,” that can be construed as hate speech, which is what led to a Christian activist getting fine $55,000. We’ll start with what the Toronto Star wrote last week about all this:

VANCOUVER—A Vancouver human-rights tribunal has ruled there’s no room for public debate about whether transgender people are who they say they are.

Well-known trans advocate Morgane Oger filed the complaint against Christian activist Bill Whatcott after he distributed flyers disparaging her for being a trans woman…

The flyers Whatcott distributed described Oger as a “biological male” and a “transvestite” who is “embracing transgender propaganda and trying to live a lie.” They referenced Oger’s pre-transition name alongside a photo of her before she transitioned.

The flyers were distributed in the Vancouver-False Creek riding in 2017 when Oger was running for office with the B.C. NDP.

Oger’s human-rights complaint said the flyers were discriminatory and hateful. Whatcott denied the allegations, asserting that his freedom of speech and religion entitled him to publish his views on Oger…

Oger said she is relieved by the decision but is also feeling emotionally drained, having just read through the decision before speaking with the Star.

“I am really so happy, that in a tribunal, using the law, we finally put it down that someone publishing hateful material that says that a transgender woman is a man, got in trouble,” she said.

Now think about that. Is it hateful to merely say a trans woman is a bio male? The Toronto Star and the Vancouver Star seem to be interchangeable, by the way and the same reporter who wrote the above story also wrote this thinly disguised editorial celebrating the end of “transphobia.” There is not a contrary view to be found anywhere in it.

But hey, who needs objectivity above the 49th parallel? And what exactly did Whatcott say? I had to go to the (Vancouver) CityNews to find out:


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Coverage by the conservative and global press raises the stakes in Viganò affair

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It’s now Day 5 after Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò dropped his nuclear bomb on the Catholic world. Although the best coverage seems to be resting mainly on media that have the good fortune to have Rome correspondents, there is some good work being done Stateside as well.

As one Washington Post columnist said, Viganò effectively nailed his 95 theses to the door of St. Peter’s. 

So this is a big deal. But in the secular press, it’s mainly two newspapers: The Post and the New York Times doing the heavy lifting.

But Viganò is not talking with them. He’s using conservative media as his outlets. I’m sure LifeSite News, a Canadian site primarily devoted to fighting abortion, never dreamed it’d be in the midst of a Vatican fist fight. But Vaganò trusts them; their articles must be bringing in tons of page views, so what’s not to like? 

Ditto for the National Catholic Register, which in the past has been overshadowed by the liberal National Catholic Reporter. These days, the Register is publishing exclusives and the Reporter is reduced to running snide analyses by Michael Sean Winters or stories like this one that only quote one side of the story.  

One newly published piece from the Register is by an Italian journalist who’s one of a number of people to whom Viganò released his 11-page “testimony.” Near the end, he repeats the dialogue between him and the archbishop.

“Monsignor, do you know what they will say? That you want revenge. That you are full of resentment for having been dismissed from the Governatorate and other things. That you are the crow who leaked the Vatileaks papers. They will say that you are unstable, as well as a conservative of the worst kind.”

“I know, I know. But that doesn’t matter to me. The one thing that matters to me is to bring the truth to the surface, so that a purification can begin. At the point that we have reached, there is no other way.” ...



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