natural law

Got bias? Pompeo gave a 'divisive' speech, which implies two kinds of insiders were divided

Let’s just say that I saw — in social media and in personal emails — two very different kinds of comments about the recent speech that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo delivered on the subject of human rights.

Quite a few people, as always, wanted to argue about the contents of the speech itself, especially its urgent emphasis on religious freedom. That’s understandable, in light of waves of images coming out of China of blindfolded Uighur Muslims being shipped off to training camps.

Others were upset about the nature of the relatively short New York Times report about the speech, which ran with this rather blunt lede:

WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Mike Pompeo delivered a divisive speech … calling for the United States to ground its human rights policy more prominently in religious liberty and property rights.

To cut to the chase, some folks were upset by the inclusion of the word “divisive,” saying that this was a loaded, biased word to use in a lede framing the contents of a hard-news story.

Meanwhile, I was actually intrigued by the word “divisive” for a rather different reason, one directly linked to debates about objectivity and fairness in journalism.

You see, if a speech is “divisive” that would imply that people who heard the speech were divided, in terms of their views of its contents. It’s hard to cover a “divisive” speech without presenting accurate, fair-minded content about the views of people on both sides of that divide. Does that make sense?

The problem with the Times peace — #DUH — is that it contains zero input from people who support the views presented by Pompeo and, thus, would be willing to provide information and input that would explain the speech from their point of view.

Maybe this is one of those cases in which there was only one point of view worth quoting, in terms of reacting to Sec. Pompeo’s words?


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CNN on Gorsuch: Is the judge a crypto-Catholic or a safe, normal Episcopalian?

Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Judge Neil Gorsuch begin today, so get set for some good TV.

A few journalists are still trying to get to the bottom of the form and content of Gorsuch’s religious views. Is he truly an Episcopalian or some kind of crypto-Catholic? Is he conservative or liberal? What are his views on abortion?

The latest effort, from CNN, assembles together what a lot of journalists have written about the nominee’s faith plus a few details the reporter found out on his own. The headline: “What is Neil Gorsuch’s religion? It’s complicated” hints at what's to come. We start here:

WASHINGTON (CNN) Earlier this month, the Trump administration summoned two dozen religious leaders to a private meeting. The mission: to rally support for Neil Gorsuch, Trump's Supreme Court nominee…
Eventually, the conversation turned to Gorsuch's own religious background.
He was raised Catholic but now worships with his wife and two daughters at St. John's Episcopal Church in Boulder, Colorado. Like the city, the congregation is politically liberal. It bars guns from its campus and installed solar panels; it condemns harsh rhetoric about Muslims and welcomes gays and lesbians. And its rector, the Rev. Susan Springer, attended the Women's March in Denver, though not as a form of protest but as a sign of support for "the dignity of every human being."

It goes a lot into his early life as a child in a Catholic family and then:

After college and law school, between stints clerking at the Supreme Court, Gorsuch studied legal philosophy at Oxford University in England, where his dissertation was supervised by John Finnis, a giant in the field and a former member of the Vatican's prestigious International Theological Commission.
Among laypeople, Finnis may be best known for his expositions on natural law, an often-misunderstood area of legal and moral philosophy.

The article then veers into a discussion of natural law. But isn’t Oxford where Gorsuch switched from the Catholic to the Church of England, also known as the Anglican Communion or, in the United States, the Episcopal Church? Writing about Gorsuch a few weeks ago, I included information on this point thanks to a helpful piece in the Daily Mail that connected the dots. 

However the CNN piece -- this is crucial -- suggests the Brits are wrong and that the judge never changed faiths.


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