Anti-Christian Bias at Reuters
This Reuter’s article just oozes anti-Christian bias. Let’s look at it in detail, beginning with the headline:
Post-Falwell, U.S. Religious Right remains a force
This is an attempt to tie the “religious right” with Falwell, who has been treated by the MSM with disdain. Furthermore, why the use of the term “religious right”? This is an attempt to label roughly 60 million American Christians with a loaded term.
In Texas, its legislative agenda has included scuttling pro-gambling bills, while ballot initiatives in several states have banned same-sex marriage
Marriage by definition is between a man and a woman. “Sam-sex marriage” is akin to referring to something as a circular square; it is incoherent.
It has also made inroads in the U.S. military, where critics say senior officers are carrying out a campaign to convert peers to evangelical Christianity — with huge implications for U.S. foreign and defense policy as the United States pursues radical Islam.
So they quote the critic, how fair and unbiased. Since when is it right to ban Christian chaplains. Furthermore, what “huge implications” is the author referring to? Are they good implications; are they bad ones? The author does not say and leaves it to our imagination.
”Some Americans are getting tired of the conflict they inspire,” said John Green, a political scientist at the University of Akron.
I’m amazed what passes as reporting these days. So we have another critic who does not even bother to back up his claim about “some Americans” with evidence.
Pointedly, it has yet to achieve any of its big goals, such as getting the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision on abortion rights.
The author assumes an “abortion right” exists which itself is a manifestation of pro-abortion bias. There is no such thing as an “abortion right” in the Constitution. Yes, the U.S. Supreme Court incorrectly “found” a right to privacy from emanations and penumbras, but that still does not constitute an unqualified ”abortion right”.
they are all staunchly opposed to abortion, gay rights, pornography, gambling, alcohol and the separation of church and state.
Setting aside that this could have been characterized not as the opposition of something, but the predilection of something, here we find another linguistic travesty with the use of the term “gay right”. Again, the author assumes there is such a thing as a “gay right” without even bothering to define or justify the term’s use.
You’re incoherent.
And gay people are amazing! We have sex so you don’t have to.
:-p
Thank you for taking the time to point out the sweeping statements and biased word usage made in this article. You are not “incoherent” at all, as what you have said here is very clear. Also, by Kevin’s editorial correction of his response, I’m assuming he used the incorrect form of “you’re”, which is funny considering he was trying to accuse you of being the incoherent one.
Sorry, lightshiner, I don’t buy your main points.
First of all, when they quoted the critic, they made clear that he is a critic of the “religious right”. To balance this critical quote the article presented positive quotes:
“They are remarkably united on their core set of issues,” said Wilson — in contrast to the environment or feminist movements which have deep divisions.
“Christian conservatives come together because they have common ground to stand on, which comes from belief in the Bible,” said Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, an influential conservative lobby group with strong evangelical ties.
Most people view this as balanced reporting: if one quotes a critic, one needs to quote a supporter. And visa versa, I might add. Balanced does not at all mean giving no negative views of an issue or group.
Imagine that I posted a blog praising the Reuter’s article for their pro-Christian stance and only included the two positive quotes that I gave above. This would be unbalanced because it does not present the negative material that appeared in the article.
In a similar way your blog berating the Reuter’s article is unbalanced. You have gone through the article and blogged the anti-Christian material and ignored the pro-Christian quotes.
And do you really believe that using terms “gay rights” or “abortion rights” actually constitute bias? Most Christians use these terms constantly in conversation- not because Christians agree with them but because they are the clearest terms to get the point across. We can lament that this is the case, just as we can lament that homosexuals are called “gay”. But this is the nature of language.
[i]Marriage by definition is between a man and a woman. “Sam-sex marriage” is akin to referring to something as a circular square; it is incoherent. [/i]
Here’s marriage, by definition.
First, Webster’s:
mar•riage (‘mer-ij, ‘ma-rij)- noun [Etymology: Middle English mariage, from Anglo-French, from marier to marry] 1 a (1) : the state of being united to a person of the opposite sex as husband or wife in a consensual and contractual relationship recognized by law (2) : the state of being united to a person of the same sex in a relationship like that of a traditional marriage b : the mutual relation of married persons : WEDLOCK c: the institution whereby individuals are joined in a marriage 2 : an act of marrying or the rite by which the married status is effected; especially : the wedding ceremony and attendant festivities or formalities 3 : an intimate or close union
From American Heritage:
mar•riage (mrj) NOUN [Middle English mariage, from Old French, from marier, to marry. See marry1.]: 1a. The legal union of a man and woman as husband and wife. b. The state of being married; wedlock. c. A common-law marriage. d. A union between two persons having the customary but usually not the legal force of marriage: a same-sex marriage. 2. A wedding. 3. A close union: “the most successful marriage of beauty and blood in mainstream comics” (Lloyd Rose). 4. [Games] The combination of the king and queen of the same suit, as in pinochle.
It appears that the top two American English dictionaries made “same-sex marriage” coherent.
Other points:
Falwell [i]was[/i] the moving force of the “religious right” and many involved will tell you that–you don’t need a news service to tie it together for you, it a well-established fact. Also, using the term “religious right” looks like an attempt to label politically active conservatives who base their beliefs on how they interpret Christian scripture. Unless you believe that Reagan was the second coming and Pat Robertson is a genuine prophet, what the followers of Falwell believe is not what all American Christians believe. If “religious right” is a loaded term to you, consider who loaded it.
Who said anything in the article about banning Christian chaplains?
Who said that abortion rights are granted by the Constitution?
The ‘critic” is making a statement about how some people are tired of the religious right. It may be the fault of the editors, but who is to say he didn’t “back up his claim”? You are aware that you’re reading a news article and not a scholarly dissertation, aren’t you?
“So we have another critic who does not even bother to back up his claim about “some Americans” with evidence.”
I mean, “some” isn’t exactly an official statistical measure, so it’s not clear what evidence he could have offered besides an appeal to common experience. In my experience, there are “some Americans” who are tired of dealing with the religious right and the conflicts they create, which proves his point. I have to believe your experience shows the same thing, Nadir, or else you’re willfully blinding yourself to a significant portion of what goes on in this country. Anyway, if you want to dispute his claim, you would have to argue that there aren’t ANY people in the U.S. who are tired of hearing from the religious right, which is very obviously not true.
And I think there are some very conservative Mormons who want to talk to you about your definition of marriage…
> Larry: “so it’s not clear what evidence he could have offered besides an appeal to common experience”
Exactly, but the author chose instead to quote a political scientist making what is, strictly speaking, a trivial observation in an apparent attempt to make readers infer that the observation was not trivial.
Hey-Mitzi!! I will come to Texas and watch you tame Rosie!!!
I think the issue we have here with regards to the definition of marriage is who establishes the correct definition. Does society have the right to redefine a God given institution? I think not. Jesus himself makes the definition clear in Mark 10:
And Pharisees came up and in order to test him asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” He answered them, “What did Moses command you?” They said, “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of divorce and to send her away.”
And Jesus said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote you this commandment. But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”
Ok, say you’re not Christian. Can you claim these scriptures are irrelevant? Nope. Belief in truth does not validate the truth; That’s solipsism. Truth is given by God because He is the only one capable of establishing truth. A subject living in a created world can not define truth for him/her self because subjectivity in truth is impossible. So even if you keep on denying the truth you can’t change its existence.
The Offensive Christian
God is not the only one who defines the institution of marriage, except in church; else we have would have to deny marriage for those of other faiths as well as any civil ceremony; common-law marriage; and a union made outside of Christian ceremony; as well as forbidding same-sex marriage. Then also if you are going to stick by the rules for God defining marriage,then you also have to accept the rules for not being allowed to divorce except those granted by God.